AUGUST 30, 2022
NEWSAUGUST 30, 2022
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
AUGUST 31, 2022
On August 24, an FBI employee was arrested at his home in Stansbury Park, Utah, and booked into the Tooele County jail on four counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child. Robert Alexander Smith was also charged with four misdemeanor counts of lewdness involving a child and two misdemeanor counts of lewdness.
Court documents indicated that the FBI employee was arrested after a young girl reported to her mother on June 8 that Smith had touched her sexually on a number of occasions in 2020.
The mother reportedly also asked her 17-year-old stepdaughter, 14-year-old daughter, 14-year-old stepdaughter, and 12-year-old daughter whether they too had experienced "very uncomfortable" encounters with Smith, all of whom first responded by crying.
A European Union meeting of foreign and defense ministers this week has failed to agree on a bloc-wide visa ban for Russians, after Poland, Finland, as well as Baltic countries pushed for a blanket ban on all entrances for Russian nationals - whether for tourism or business. Ukraine's President Zelensky has been lobbying European capitals to move through with the ban, even if just on individual country levels.
Proponents cast allowance of Russian travel within the EU as some kind of reward: "There must be more restrictions on travel for Russian citizens," Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said. "We cannot simply give bonuses to people which are supporting such presidents as Putin," he told reporters in Prague, where the EU meeting is taking place. But coming out of Wednesday's meeting Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto was the first to announce that the policy measure has failed to gain necessary unity, after those who opposed were led chiefly by Hungary and Germany. EU leaders did still, however, tried to spin this as a "win":
The discovery of 17 bodies in a medieval well, located on a UK shopping mall construction site, confounded historians for years. After genetic testing, researchers have discovered they are Ashkenazi Jews.
Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995. As a biologist, she has long studied DNA, biochemistry, and embryonic development. On August 22, Emma, Germany's leading feminist magazine, published Chantal Louis' interview with Nüsslein-Volhard, in which the biologist both attacked core claims advanced by trans activists and criticized their anti-scientific basis.
Suggesting that an ignorance of basic biology may be to blame for the "unscientific" claim that there are many genders, Nüsslein-Volhard noted (in German; the following is a Google translation) that "all mammals have two sexes. There's the one sex that produces the eggs [and] has two X chromosomes. That's called female. And there's the other one that makes the sperm [and] has an X and a Y chromosome. That's called male."
AUGUST 29, 2022
Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. was shot at least twice in an attempted carjacking Sunday in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department said.
Robinson, 23, was assaulted on H Street NE by two teenage gunmen who wanted to steal his car, a white Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, according to Chief of Police Robert Contee.
“At some point during the course of this robbery attempt, our victim in this case began to struggle with one of the suspects, was able to actually wrestle that firearm away from one of the suspects. And he was shot twice by the second suspect,” Contee told reporters Monday.
New York lawmakers believe they have found a way to reduce firearm trafficking and mass shootings. Approximately 50 legislators penned a letter to Mastercard and American Express, requesting that the companies flag purchases made at gun stores.
Democratic state Senator Zellnor Myrie shared the letter with Gothamistand spoke about leading the effort. Myrie explained that he believed the public would agree with the lawmakers' request.
While credit card companies do not track specific items purchased, they do use merchant category codes designated by retailer type. Mastercard's quick reference booklet notes that purchases made at a gun store fall under the "miscellaneous" or "durable goods" retailer codes. Those two MCCs also include vendors of gas lighting fixtures, musical instruments, fireworks, party supplies, and luggage, to name a few.
AUGUST 30, 2022
A Florida man went viral after he posted a car dealership quote showing it would cost nearly $30,000 to replace the battery in his electric vehicle.
Rob O'Donnell posted the quote, obtained from Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral, on Twitter last week. The quote includes the cost of the battery (nearly $27,000), the cost of labor ($1,200), and taxes for the repair (more than $1,700).
In total, it would cost O'Donnell $29,842.15 to replace the battery in his 2012 Chevrolet Volt. The car itself is worth far less.
"Bet that Chevy Volt sounded like a good idea at first," O'Donnell quipped.
The absurd cost led many social media users to question the authenticity of the quote. But the car dealership has confirmed it is legitimate.
"This is an estimate for a 12 year old vehicle out of warranty and for a battery that is extremely hard to get, due to the older technology of the 12 year old vehicle. The dealership does not set battery prices," the dealership explained on Facebook.
Some small businesses in Europe are posting their skyrocketing electricity bills to social media as the worsening energy crisis threatens to cripple their economies.
"My mum owns a small café in Leicester. Her electricity bill has just jumped from £10k ($12k) a year to £55k ($64k) a year," claimed one Twitter user.
AUGUST 30, 2022
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.