Michigan Schools To Let Students Choose Gender

Michigan Schools To Let Students Choose Gender, Name And Bathroom (Source dailycaller.com)

Michigan’s State Board of Education has drafted a guidance that would push the state’s schools to allow all students, regardless of parental or doctoral input, to choose their gender, name, pronouns, and bathrooms. Spearheaded by board president John C. Austin and signed by state superintendent   Brian Whiston, the guidance informs Michigan public schools that only the students themselves–i.e. not their parents or doctors–can determine what their individual gender identities are. “The responsibility for determining a student’s gender identity rests with the student. Outside confirmation from medical or mental health professionals, or documentation of legal changes, is not needed,” the guidance states. Gender identity is defined in the guidance as “a person’s deeply held internal sense or psychological knowledge of their own gender, regardless of the biological sex they were assigned at birth.”

ISIS Trains 400 Fighters to Attack Europe in wave of Bloodshed

ISIS TRAINS 400 FIGHTERS TO ATTACK EUROPE IN WAVE OF BLOODSHED (Source Associated Press) The Islamic State group has trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terror cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris with orders to choose the time, place and method for maximum chaos, officials have told The Associated Press. The network of agile and semiautonomous cells shows the reach of the extremist group in Europe even as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq. The officials, including European and Iraqi intelligence officials and a French lawmaker who follows the jihadi networks, described camps in Syria, Iraq and possibly the former Soviet bloc where attackers are trained to target the West. Before being killed in a police raid, the ringleader of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks claimed he had entered Europe in a multinational group of 90 fighters, who scattered “more or less everywhere.”

But the biggest break yet in the Paris attacks investigation – the arrest on Friday of fugitive Salah Abdeslam – did not thwart the multipronged attack just four days later on the Belgian capital’s airport and subway system. 

From Russia with love: Why the Kremlin backs Trump

From Russia with love: Why the Kremlin backs Trump(Source businessinsider.com)Donald Trump is a brave pro-Putin political maverick who would end US foreign wars and perhaps lift sanctions on Moscow. Hillary Clinton, however, is a warmonger beholden to the military-industrial complex. Russian state TV, which hews closely to the Kremlin’s worldview, leaves little doubt about whom Moscow supports in November’s US presidential election: “The Donald.” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman took brief exception this month to a Trump attack video that showed Putin laughing at the prospect of Clinton defending America. Officials and analysts say the Kremlin still sees Trump as the best candidate by a mile. Putin has hailed Trump as “very talented.

Germany wants its gold back

Germany wants its gold back (Source RT) The Bundesbank has announced plans to  repatriate some of Germany’s gold reserves from abroad. In    October last year Germany’s gold reserves stood to around 3,384 tons, worth about €120 billion, which is the second largest in the world after the US. Weidmann added the rest of the gold will remain in New York and London, which he says are as safe as Germany. In case of emergency, these reserves would quickly be converted on the markets in these cities, the banker said. The Bundesbank has been criticized at home for keeping a major part of Germany’s gold reserves abroad. Critics are demanding the complete return of the gold to the country. They regard the gold as insurance if a crisis comes, and the immediate physical availability would be the decisive criterion. When trying to move gold from New York in 2014, the Bundesbank met obstacles from US authorities when officials tried to inspect the German gold kept in US vaults. “I’m no conspiracy theorist, but the Bundesbank should be able to audit the gold once a year like it does with reserves in Frankfurt,” Hans Olaf Henkel, a German member of the European Parliament, told RT. Some even doubted the German gold is still physically there. “We are still missing published lists of gold bar number, even though the US Federal reserve publishes this list for their own gold,” said Peter Boehringer, founder of the Repatriate our Gold Campaign.

Pope washes feet of Muslim migrants

Pope washes feet of Muslim migrants (Source miamiherald.com) Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Christian and Hindu refugees and declared them all children of the same God, as he performed a gesture of welcome and brotherhood at a time of increased anti-Muslim sentiment following the Brussels attacks. Francis denounced the carnage as a “gesture of war” carried out by blood-thirsty people beholden to the weapons industry during an Easter Week Mass with asylum-seekers at a shelter in Castelnuovo di Porto, outside Rome. “We have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace,” Francis said in his homily, delivered off-the-cuff in the windy courtyard of the center. Several of the migrants then wept as Francis knelt before them, poured holy water from a brass pitcher over their feet, wiped them clean and kissed them. Francis was greeted with a banner reading “Welcome” in a variety of languages as he walked down a makeshift aisle to celebrate the Mass.

Israel’s cancelled plan on Ethiopian Jews prompts rally

Israel’s cancelled plan on Ethiopian Jews prompts rally (Source Aljazeera.com) Hundreds of Ethiopian Israelis marched in Jerusalem after the government cancelled plans to allow their relatives to emigrate from the African nation, calling the move discrimination. Police and organisers estimated the crowd at up to 2,000 people for Sunday’s march, which ended outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. “Stop the suffering, stop the discrimination, stop the racism,” demonstrators chanted, holding signs with similar slogans as well as pictures of relatives left behind in Ethiopia. Israel’s Ethiopian community includes about 135,000 people. Israel brought the bulk of Ethiopia’s Jewish community to the country between 1984 and 1991 under the Law of Return guaranteeing citizenship to all Jews. However, the law does not apply to the ” Falash Mura, descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity, many under duress, in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Israeli government in November voted to allow the immigration of some 9,100 Falash Mura. But on March 7, an official from Netanyahu’s office informed members of parliament the decision would not be implemented because of budgetary constraints.

The Economist rates Trump presidency among its top 10 global risks

The Economist rates Trump presidency among its top 10 global risks( Source politico.eu) A Donald Trump presidency poses a top-10 risk event that could disrupt the world economy, lead to political chaos in the U.S. and heighten security risks for the United States, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Electing Trump could also start a trade war, hurt trade with Mexico and be a godsend to terrorist recruiters in the Middle East, according to the latest EIU forecasts. The well-respected global economic and geopolitical analysis firm   put a possible Trump presidency in its  top 10 global risks this month, released Wednesday. Other risks include a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, a fracture of the Eurozone, and Britain’s possible departure from the European Union. Trump’s controversial remarks on Muslims would be a gift to “potential recruiters who have long been trying to paint the U.S. as an anti-Muslim country. His rhetoric will certainly help that recruiting effort,” said Robert Powell, global risk briefing manager at EIU. Until Trump, the firm had never rated a pending election of a candidate to be a geopolitical risk to the U.S. and the world. The firm has no plans to include Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz or John Kasich on future risk lists. “It’s highly unusual, and I don’t think we ever have done it where we’ve had a single politician be the center of our risk items,” Powell said in an interview, but noted that the firm has once included the transition at the top of the Chinese Communist Party as a top-ten risk as well.

The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad

The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Triad. Can the U.S. Afford to Modernize it? (Source southfront.org) The defense budget of the United States stands at roughly ten times the amount of its closest rival in real terms. With more than seven hundred military facilities around the globe, and direct and indirect armed interventions in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa the armed forces of the United States are consuming vast amounts of money. When one adds in the significant amounts of waste inherent in the military industrial complex, the grand scale of the Department of Defense budget for 2016 in the amount of $521.7 billion has still left military planners and defense industry lobbyists bemoaning it as insufficient. It has recently been argued that the advancements and achievements by both Russia and China in modernizing their military capabilities over the past decade have caught the U.S. military establishment off guard. This is up to debate; however, the fact remains that the only real potential adversaries of the U.S. have exponentially improved their military forces, mainly in the area of missile and aircraft capabilities, but also in the area of naval power projection and nuclear submarine deterrence over the past decade. The conventional military forces of both nations have been greatly improved in all respects. In light of the United States losing its edge conventionally, many would assume that the U.S. could always fall back on its nuclear deterrence capability. This is also proving; however, not to be a suitable strategy as the U.S. has invested very little in this area of defense over the past half century. China has fielded indigenously designed and manufactured SSBNs to add a viable third leg to its nuclear triad in only the past five years, while Russia has greatly modernized its silo and mobile ICBMs, as well as fielding advanced electronic warfare systems over the past decade. The United States has apparently decided to utterly neglect its own nuclear capabilities since the dissolving of the Soviet Union. The U.S. defense establishment is now faced with not only the  major challenge of modernizing its nuclear deterrence capabilities, but also where to find the vast sums of money required to accomplish this feat.

FDA Says Test of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Is Safe

FDA Says Test of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Is Safe (Source nbcnews.com) It’s probably safe to test genetically modified mosquitoes in Key West, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday, but it’s asking for public opinion before formally approving such an experiment. It’s likely to get an earful. The American public has strong opinions about genetically modified anything, and a quarter of those asked in a recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center said they thought genetically engineered mosquitoes had actually spread Zika virus in Brazil. The World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts say that’s impossible, and say it’s the natural Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that are spreading it by biting people. “By allowing the trial, the FDA will be signaling that science and evidence-based practices should prevail over the hysteria and irrationality long associated with genetically modified organisms,” said Dr. Zachary Adelman, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech University. A British-based company called Oxitec is developing the mosquitoes to fight dengue, a painful and potentially deadly virus that circulates in many countries around the world and which is especially bad in Brazil. The same Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that spread dengue also carry the chikungunya virus, the yellow fever virus and Zika.

Anonymous declares ‘total war’ on Trump, plans April attack

Anonymous declares ‘total war’ on Trump, plans April attack (Source RT) Hacking collective Anonymous has vowed “total war” against Donald Trump, making a “call to arms” by summoning fellow hacktivists to unite with them in an attack against all of his websites on April 1st. In a resurgence of its #OpTrump campaign, the group released a new video addressing the controversial Republican candidate directly. “Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing,” a masked figure declares in customary Anonymous fashion. “You have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideals,” he continues. The focus is then turned to hacktivists and citizens: “This is a call to arms…we need you to shut down his websites, research and expose what he doesn’t want the public to know. We need you to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand.” The clip ends with a message for Trump “This is not a warning, this is a declaration of total war. Donald Trump – it is too late to expect us.”