[Independent] Ghislaine Maxwell has been asked to monitor prison inmates who might be suicidal, her attorneys have claimed in unsealed court documents.
The 58-year-old is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn following her arrest on 2 July, and has been charged with six counts of recruiting and grooming girls and young women to be sexually abused by both her and her former business partner and boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier in the year, Ms Maxwell’s lawyers, Mark Cohen and Jeffrey Pagliuca, complained that she was being woken up every 15 minutes in her cell by prison guards to check she had not harmed herself.
However, the New York Post reported on Tuesday that Ms Maxwell has now been tasked with keeping an eye on the wellbeing of other inmates.
#4
Looking after the welfare of other inmates? Or is it grooming of other inmates? Could also be that she is being set up for the big sleep like Epstein.
[NYP] An alligator and a golfer went head to tail in this epic video. Watch as this brave soul snatches a golf ball that somehow got lodged on a gator’s tail at Coral Oaks Golf Course in Cape Coral, Florida.
[Al Ahram] Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Wednesday vowed the protest movement against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko would prevail despite a brutal crackdown by Minsk authorities, as she received the EU's top rights prize.
"We are bound to win and we will win," the exiled former presidential candidate said in Brussels, accepting the Sakharov Prize on behalf of the opposition movement.
Belarus has been gripped by four months of unprecedented anti-government demonstrations that erupted after a disputed presidential election in August which saw Lukashenko claim a sixth term in office.
His opponents say the polls were rigged and that political novice Tikhanovskaya, who ran in place of her locked away Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! husband was the true winner.
Belarusian security forces have unleashed a harsh crackdown against the protests, detaining demonstators and pushing opposition leaders into exile.
"I have only one wish this year, I want every Belarusian who is now in jail or was forced to live in exile to return home," Tikhanovskaya, who is currently based in Lithuania, told the European Parliament.
Tikhanovskaya demanded a tougher response from Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... against Lukashenko's regime, as the strongman clings to power after more than a quarter of a century in charge.
"We call on Europe to be braver in their decisions and support the people of Belarus now -- not tomorrow and not somewhen in the future," Tikhanovskaya said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/17/2020 00:18 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[TheCollegeFix] A former employee of the Ohio-based Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute has pleaded guilty to selling American research secrets in China.
Yu Zhou, 50, formerly of Dublin, Ohio, admitted to conspiring to steal scientific trade secrets related to research, identification and treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions.
"The Chinese government has created a large-scale, sophisticated system to steal American ingenuity," said U.S. Attorney David DeVillers in a statement following Zhou’s guilty plea. "We hope this conviction demonstrates that we will fight this system."
Zhou and his wife, Li Chen, 47, both spent a decade working in separate labs at Nationwide. During this time, Zhou set up a separate business in China seeking to profit from the trade secrets he took from the research institute related to exosomes and exosome isolation.
At Nationwide, Zhou’s research included a "novel isolation" method in which one drop of blood could be used to isolate exosomes. Exosomes play a crucial role in the research of a number of diseases, including liver fibrosis, liver cancer, and necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition found in premature babies.
According to the plea document, Zhou and his wife began selling exosome "isolation kits" out of the business they had created in China. In addition to their profits, they received benefits from the Chinese government, including the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Zhou left Nationwide Research in 2017, and Chen followed him in 2018. A year later, the couple was apprehended in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,. In July of this year, Chen pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal trade secrets and commit wire fraud.
As a part of their plea agreement, the couple agreed to forfeit the profits earned on the stolen research, including approximately $1.4 million, 500,000 shares of common stock of Avalon GloboCare Corp. and 400 shares of common stock of GenExosome Technologies, Inc.
"Today’s plea underscores the Department of Justice’s commitment to protecting American research and trade secrets from those incentivized to steal them by Chinese Government programs," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers. "China’s endemic efforts to rob, replicate and replace products that they do not have the ability to develop themselves will not go unchecked, and those who seek to profit from the theft of trade secrets will be held accountable."
Zhou’s plea is only the most recent example of a researcher selling secrets either in China or to the Chinese government. In August, UCLA researcher Guan Lei was arrested for destroying a hard drive during an FBI investigation into Chinese theft of sensitive software and technical data. In May, former Ohio State University rheumatology professor and researcher Song Guo Zheng was arrested while trying to flee the country with stolen laptops and USB drives.
[NYP] French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for the coronavirus and will self-isolate for the next week, the presidential Elysee Palace announced Thursday.
"The President of the Republic has been diagnosed positive for COVID-19 today," his office said in a statement. "This diagnosis was made following a PCR test performed at the onset of the first symptoms."
The brief statement did not say what symptoms Macron experienced.
"He will continue to work and take care of his activities at a distance," the statement added.
[Red State] Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been on a pro-life kick recently and the only people are complaining are the ones in her own party.
According to Live Action, Gabbard introduced HR 8939, a bill that would ban the abortion of children capable of feeling pain:
The full text of the bill is currently unavailable, but Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) wasted no time in thanking Gabbard. "Former Democratic Presidential Candidate Tulsi Gabbard introduced her SECOND Pro-Life bill this week, which would amend Title 18 of the U.S. code to give pain-capable fetuses rights under the law," the group said on Facebook. "Tulsi has previously voted against this bill three times, but is now the SPONSOR of the new bill. [...] thank you Tulsi!"
DFLA has created a petition asking members of Congress to support Gabbard’s pain-capable abortion bill. The organization also has a petition asking Congress to support her abortion survivors protection bill.
Pro-life organizations began thanking Gabbard for her work to help children in the womb, including Pro-Life San Francisco.
"Democratic House Rep and former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has introduced two crucial bills, one to protect pain-capable fetuses and another to ensure the provision of healthcare for abortion survivors," wrote PLSF in a Facebook post. "Both are fundamental to ensuring justice for UCSF’s most vulnerable victims of fetal organ harvesting, and we are inspired to see them originate from a left-leaning national legislator. The future of California, the Democratic Party, and all of America is pro-life!"
[Breitbart] Walmart announced on Monday that it will triple the value of goods imported from India to the United States by 2027, a pivot away from Chinese suppliers that will add up to $10 billion per year.
"As an international retailer that brings value to customers and communities worldwide, Walmart understands that local entrepreneurs and manufacturers are vital to the success of the global retail sector. We see huge potential for Indian suppliers to grow their businesses by leveraging the unique scale and global distribution opportunity Walmart provides," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said.
"By significantly accelerating our annual India exports in the coming years, we are supporting the Make in India initiative and helping more local businesses reach international customers while creating jobs and prosperity at home in India. It is also a way for Walmart to bring more high-quality, India-made goods to millions of customers all across the world," McMillon said.
"Make in India" is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s effort to bolster Indian manufacturing and encourage stronger, more diverse international investment in Indian markets ("more diverse" investment in practice means "not from China"). India’s hunger for a more potent manufacturing sector grew more acute as tensions between India and China across their Himalayan border increased.
Newsweek saw the announcement as part of a "nationwide pivot" away from China to other trade partners, noting that overall U.S. goods imports from China have declined by "a stark 16.2 percent between 2018 and 2019:
Currently, Walmart estimates Chinese suppliers make up 70-80 percent of its U.S. merchandise, according to the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
However, following a ramping up of tariffs placed on exports from China under President Trump, a host of other, predominantly Asian, countries are now seeing a marked increase in trade with the U.S.
The biggest overall beneficiaries, according to a study from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development that examines the extent of trade diversion from the trade wars, are: Taiwan, Mexico, the EU, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, Korea, and India.
Newsweek cited analysts who expected U.S. trade with India to continue growing under the Biden administration, in part because low-cost retail chains seek to diversify supply chains that have grown too dependent on Chinese products, and India is appealing as a huge market and stable democracy with "pragmatic" leadership.
Despite China’s relentless efforts to mitigate political fallout from the coronavirus or even turn the virus to its advantage, Newsweek’s analysts suspected the urge to diversify away from Chinese supply chains grew much stronger because of the pandemic, and even if Biden takes a far softer stance toward Beijing than Trump did, the tendency to pivot away from China will continue.
So China maybe got President Joe Biden, but in the process their economy is taking a permanent hit. That victory is looking awfully pyrrhic.
Walmart is also working to increase its share of the Indian retail market after flat international sales growth for the past few years. Walmart acquired an Indian e-commerce company called Flipkart in 2018 and is seeking to grow its business in tandem with the increased exports announced on Monday, presenting the two initiatives as a demonstration of commitment to the Indian economy (one of the other three foreign markets where Walmart sees the greatest potential for growth is China). Made in USA would be better but I guess it's too much to expect.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/17/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Baby steps. Eventually we do indeed have to get back to
Made in the USA.
Less stuff, better stuff built to last.
More jobs, fewer profits and billionaires, stronger communities and healthier families.
#2
I long for some American made products that have stopped being made in the USA.
The Weiler Abrasives old 71078 dust pan (They now sell a cheap replacement made in Sri Lanka)
Corningware Visions
Pyrexware
GE incandescent light bulbs
Electricord (Leviton) 250W brooder clamp light
All now replaced by foreign made cheap junk.
#4
/\ Not just the light bulbs, but the fixtures as well. Add to that nearly anything associated with plumbing hardware and fasteners of any type. You want an example of economic betrayal, visit any Home Depot or Lowes store.
#5
With Wally World and a host of other US F-1000's having already fed the CCP Military Dragon.
Changing to India and other sources maybe too late.
Question:
Given the MILLIONS South of the Border always seeking to ILLEGALLY enter the USA. Why hasn't Wally World and/or Others setup shop in South America?
#7
^^ It's culture. Way back in the 60s it was noted how Indian and Chinese immigrants prospered in free market economies vs those of decidedly socialist or communist flavors. Have you seen the same effect with the Latin community? It's not saying that they are not a hard working community, but that there is something missing that drives them in the classical capitalistic pursuit in many foreign lands.
#8
Great - I now have hope I can find a fuckin' coffee maker not made in China for under $50. I went shopping a few months ago and all six brands had that label on it. Or - I could go to some foofy place like Williams-Sonoma and spend half a paycheck on the German model that also does lattes, espressos and all that other bullshit.
#13
Software obsolescence is different. It just is. You don't have to plan for it so much as know that it's coming. Computer hardware from twenty years ago is so dramatically different from what we have now, it isn't even funny. Windows 2000 (or even XP 3, which isn't 20 years old) couldn't hope to effectively run the most modern hardware.
#14
Yeah, they like making the cheap stuff a whole lot better because it wears out and breaks much sooner than the good stuff and that keeps their cash flow going. I think they know exactly how long each type of material will last and will always use the cheapest plastic available. If they have to use metal it will also be the cheapest and flimsiest tin they can find. You'll pay a lot more for the good stuff initially but in the long run you'll save.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/17/2020 12:16 Comments ||
Top||
#16
Vernal has a point but what if you have an old computer running an elderly version of Windows? Fine, they won't support the old version. I could live with that. But if that old computer is on the Internet, Microsoft will reach out and render that old operating system inoperable. It happened to me. When I tried to boot it a message appeared on my screen advising me that I needed to migrate to a new operating system. Nevermind that the old computer would not meet the new operating system's hardware requirements. They broke that old system out of pure greed. I should have installed BSD on it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/17/2020 12:31 Comments ||
Top||
#17
MS was/is a shitty old-fashioned monopolist.
F&C is talking about real stuff made by normal companies that are competing fairly and on the merits in a well-regulated marketplace. Nothing in common with MS
#18
6 months ago I bought a Cannon TS3322 printer. Wireless or can be used with a USB cable. 2 weeks ago the wireless option quit, "wifi has been disabled". I didn't disable it and I can't find any way to re-enable it. Plugged it in with the cable. It quit 2 days ago. Nothing I do will get it going again which is a shame because the photo print quality was top notch. My nearest neighbor has the same model and hers did the same thing. Not made in China though, made in Viet Nam.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/17/2020 15:21 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Compromised patients in nursing homes are most at risk to succumb from CV-19. I know of one person who happened to have CV-19 and died in a nursing home. Most other people who I have of that tested positive for CV-19 never went to the hospital. They were treated and sent home. They survived and recovered. Focus on nursing homes and the health-compromised.
So why is our country being shut down and being slowly ground away? How about a bumper sticker: "Dump a politician and free the 330 million."
[IsraelTimes] In study not yet peer-reviewed, Yale researchers find that coronavirus patients had high levels of autoantibodies that targeted organs and tissue instead of latching onto virus.
The coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague) ...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men... causes the body to produce a long-lasting immune response that actually attacks the body instead of the virus, possibly explaining why some patients continue to have a variety of symptoms long after they are clear of infection, scientists have found.
The research has not yet been published or peer-reviewed.
"COVID-19 patients make autoantibodies that actually interfere with immune responses against the virus," Aaron Ring, an immunobiologist at Yale University and senior author of study, told the Guardian in a report published Sunday.
The result can damage the body, including the brain, blood vessels, and liver, areas that have been seen to suffer in those with symptoms of what has become known as "long COVID" — continued illness, fatigue or breathlessness in those who were infected and then recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Ring worked with Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale, to monitor COVID-19 patients with various severities of the disease and compared them to health hospital workers, looking for immune system antibodies that work by attacking any of nearly 3,000 proteins.
Whereas normal antibodies latch onto the virus proteins to prevent them from spreading, autoantibodies are the wrong shape and instead attach to proteins that are on human cells, or that have been released by them, the report said.
The study, the scientists wrote, found that COVID-19 patients had "dramatic increases in autoantibody reactivities" compared with hospital workers who did not have the disease.
Though some autoantibodies were apparently present in the patients before they were infected with the virus, others only appeared and increased as the disease took hold. More than five percent of hospitalized patients had damaging autoantibodies. The more autoantibodies there were, the more severe the COVID-19 symptoms.
"We certainly believe that these autoantibodies are harmful to patients with COVID-19," said Ring, adding that the damaging effects could possibly continue even after the infection itself is no longer causing illness.
"Because antibodies can persist for a long time, it’s conceivable that they may contribute to the development of long COVID diseases," he said.
"Post-COVID syndromes could plausibly be caused by long-lived autoantibodies that persist well after the virus is cleared from the body," Ring told the Guardian. "If this is the case, there are immunosuppressive treatments, such as those used for rheumatological diseases, that could be effective."
Long COVID is believed to affect about 10% of 18- to 49-year-old coronavirus patients, and as much as 20% of those over the age of 70, according to the report.
The scientists believe that more than one type of autoantibody in each patient is causing the trouble.
Researchers are also looking at whether autoantibodies are to blame as well for long-term symptoms in other disease such as Ebola and Chikungunya and in cancer patients after immunotherapy, the report said.
The study comes as countries around the world, including Britannia, the US and Israel, are gearing up for or have already started mass immunization programs against the coronavirus.
Since the start of the global pandemic early this year, there have been 70,461,926 cases of infection reported to the World Health Organization, according to figures it published Sunday. There have been 1,599,704 deaths.
#2
With a population of roughly 1.3 billion, I suppose China can come up with a couple of bright bio-engineers. I wonder how Fauci got their names, though.
#5
^Yes. Covid crisis will lead to increased funds for research - in particular, due to the failure of covid vaccines to induce long-term immune memory - to research into immune memory. Pure research always pays off.
Globally it has a .09 of 1 % global infection rate.
and with a 2.27% Mortality IF INFECTED.
Global Odds of dying from C-19 are:
1,599,704 / 7,800,000,000 or 0.020509 of 1%
Now think about the 3rd and 4th world countries it was in with next to no Medical industry.
10 December
[BenarNews] Philippine police on Thursday arrested a news hound working for an independent media outlet, which the military accused of being a front for communist murderous Moslems, a journalists’ union said.
Police early in the day picked up Lady Ann Salem, an editor with the online publication Manila Today, from her home in Mandaluyong city, in Metropolitan Manila, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said.
Salem was one of seven people taken into custody when officers allegedly found weapons and explosives in their homes after serving them with search warrants, the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group confirmed in a statement.
"Journalist and Manila Today editor Lady Ann Salem was among those arrested in a wave of arrests conducted by the Philippine National Police this morning. The police has yet to release details of the charges against the journalist," the union said in a Facebook post.
Salem is also a communications officer for the Philippine chapter of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, a London-based organization.
RED TAGGED
During a senate hearing last week, Manila Today was "red tagged" by the military’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
As part of red tagging, the Philippine military and police label groups or individuals as being supporters of communist rebels, or as faceless myrmidons themselves involved with alleged legal fronts for the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.
Police alleged that when they searched Salem’s house, they found four .45-caliber pistols, four grenades, laptops, hard drives, mobile phones and "assorted" identification documents. The police didn’t give more details.
Salem is the second red-tagged journalist to be arrested and placed in durance vile You have the right to remain silent... for alleged possession of firearms and explosives, a crime for which judges usually deny bail.
Frenchiemae Cumpio, 21, of Eastern Vista community papers in Leyte province, has behind bars on the same charge since February.
Colleagues said Cumpio, who denied the allegations. No, no! Certainly not! might have been arrested because of her reports that focused on alleged corruption and abuses by the military.
A third journalist, Anne Kreuger, with the Paghimutad publication on Negros Island, was arrested late last year for alleged firearms possession, but is out on bail.
Last month, National Police Chief Gen. Camilo Cascolan said counter-narcotics operations had led to the arrest of "357,069 suspects, 7,987 deaths and the surrender of 1,290,768" since mid-2016.
Spokespersons for Duterte were not immediately available on Thursday to comment on activists’ allegations.
[Washington Examiner] The United States Postal Service is struggling to process an inundation of packages as the coronavirus pandemic prevents people across the country from getting together for the holidays and keeping consumers out of crowded stores.
Online shopping surged more than 20% on Black Friday and more than 44% over a five-day period that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year, Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history, notching more than $11.4 billion in sales.
The influx of online shopping has been a boon to retailers whose sales were dampened earlier this year by coronavirus-related restrictions, but the Postal Service and other delivery services have struggled to handle the unprecedented volume of mail.
#1
But what doesn't "overwhelm" the Postal Service ?
Perhaps moving the Christmas holidays to different dates within separate FEMA regions could provide some much needed relief? Postal workers in a busy FEMA Region IV could be augmented by not-so-busy postal workers in Regions II and III? Special Duty Pay (SDP), travel and per diem, bonuses, other incentives.
FDR's legacy (while he didn't invent it) Daylight Savings Time is still with us today. Think what this could do for a Plugs or Kam legacy.
#2
...you forgot the union. Put the Postal Service back under Congress, per Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. You having problems with USPS? Then you can take it directly to your congresscritter, no passing the buck.
#4
/\ In another article here this morning, a commenter said he just got an unrequested ballot.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/17/2020 10:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
If only there were some way to predict these surges in demand, then the Post Office could plan to deal with them. Maybe we could train a neural network or something...
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.
[NYP] An alligator and a golfer went head to tail in this epic video. Watch as this brave soul snatches a golf ball that somehow got lodged on a gator’s tail at Coral Oaks Golf Course in Cape Coral, Florida.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Red State] Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been on a pro-life kick recently and the only people are complaining are the ones in her own party.
Stay-at-home teachers and distance learning really are the keys. 
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
But what doesn't "overwhelm" the Postal Service ?
