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Smoking

Smoking banned at all bus stops, waiting kiosks in Taipei City, Taiwan

Taipei City bus
© Taiwan News
The Department of Health of Taipei City announced Monday that starting from Jan 1, 2017, smoking at the 932 bus stops and 1,150 waiting kiosks in the city will be banned, and fines will begin to be imposed starting Mar 1, 2017.

A fine from NT$2,000 to NT$10,000 will be imposed on violators according to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act, the department said.

Health department official Lin Meng-hui said the department had teamed up with the city's transportation and environmental protection departments to conduct a survey and 95 percent of those surveyed support the idea of banning smoking at bus stops and waiting areas.

Lin said the ban will take effect from Jan 1, 2017 and a promulgation period will last until Feb 28, adding that starting Mar 1 fines will be imposed.

Bomb

Up to 3,000 passengers, staff evacuated from Moscow Railway stations amid bomb threats

Moscow police
© Sputnik/ Iliya Pitalev
Up to 3,000 passengers and staff members have been evacuated from Kazansky, Leningradsky and Yaroslavsky railway terminals in Moscow amid bomb threats, a source in emergency services told RIA Novosti on Monday.

"Phone calls warning of bombs at the Kazansky and Leningradsky railway stations prompted evacuations of a thousand of people from each site. Further 750 people were evacuated from the Yaroslavsky station. We are waiting for explosive-sniffing dogs," the source said.

The three railway stations are located very close to each other and serve as a key transport hub for thousands of people commuting to work in Moscow every day.

Wine n Glass

Poll: Most Russians want govt to raise minimum alcohol-purchase age

russian liquor store
© Alexey Malgavko / Sputnik
About three quarters of Russians would support the increase of minimum legal age of alcohol purchase from current 18 to 21 years, the state-run VTSIOM public opinion research center reports.

The proportion of respondents who said they would support such move is currently at 77 percent, up from about 70 percent registered in the past three years. Seventeen percent of Russians said they were opposed to the potential restriction.

Women and elderly people showed more support to the proposal than men and younger people, the researchers said. Residents of cities with a population of about 1 million were more inclined to the idea than the population of smaller towns.

However, Russia's largest urban centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg showed the same level of support for a potential increase in the alcohol purchase age as smaller towns.

Evil Rays

Massive brawls break out in malls across the US

brawls mall cop
Last minute holiday shoppers have been filmed brawling with each other in New Jersey, Alabama and Georgia shopping malls ahead of Christmas.

A fight broke out at Jersey City's Newport Center Mall on Friday night when two people started punching each other in the middle of a huge crowd.

As onlookers gathered around while several people hit each other, a separate fight broke out off to the side.

Handcuffs

Christmas escape: Inmates break out of Tennessee jail by removing cell toilet

prison
© Stephen Lam / Reuters
Six inmates at the Cocke County Jail escaped custody after removing a toilet from its bearings and climbing through the hole in the floor, according to local reports. Two escapees have been captured.

Early on December 25, the six inmates exploited rusted bolts holding down a toilet of a county jail cell in downtown Newport, Tennessee, and escaped, according to the Cocke County Sheriff's Office.

Two inmates, John Mark Speir and Steven Lewis, were captured that evening, the sheriff's office said. Upon Speir's arrest, Daniel Speir and Jarred Schoondermark were charged with harboring a fugitive in Cosby, Tennessee, according to reports.

The inmates still at-large are John Thomas Shehee, Harce Wade Allen, Eric S Click, and David Wayne Frazier.

Brain

British futurist with cryogenic facility reveals plans to freeze his own head

Max More
© News Scan
Dr. Max More
A British 'futurist' in charge of one of the world's largest cryogenic facilities has compared himself to Leonardo Da Vinci, saying it is just a matter of time before science advances to the point where preserved bodies can be revived after death.

Dr Max More, who was born in Bristol and went to Oxford University, also revealed he has plans to preserve just his head in the future, saying "the rest of my body is replaceable". He is the President and CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in Scottsdale, Arizona - a facility which began storing bodies in 1982.

Earlier this year, a 14-year-old girl who died of cancer became the youngest Briton to be cryogenically frozen in the hope she can be "woken up" and cured in the future after winning a landmark court case.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, arrived at the only other crypto-preservation facility in the US, the Cryonics Institute in Michigan, at the end of October. She is their 143rd patient.
14-year-old girl in cryopreservation
© News Scan
A 14-year-old girl became the youngest British person to be cryo-preserved earlier this week.
"It's an unusual job to be running a cryonics organisation," said Dr More earlier this year in a documentary by Galactic Public Archives. "It's impossible to give a date to say when we can revive people....it could be decades, a century. We are like Leonardo Da Vinci who could design wings and helicopter which could work but he didn't have the tools to build them back then. Of course we are developing the technology to reduce the damage done to our patients to get them cryo-preserved but we don't know exactly how we will reverse that process right now."

Comment: See also: For $80,000, people are signing up to be beheaded, frozen for a chance at life after death.


Heart - Black

Despicable: 'Child exploitation officer' caught distributing child porn on duty — busted AGAIN!

cop child porn Police Officer Alan C. Vigiard
Less than one year after being given back access to the internet for his previous conviction of distributing child pornography, former Adams Police Officer Alan C. Vigiard downloaded and shared images of young children being sexually exploited.

Last week, Vigiard was ordered to serve 10-12 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to child pornography — again.

In 2009, Vigiard was suspended after allegations surfaced that he'd been viewing and distributing child pornography — while on duty, at the police station — for hours every day. Before he was suspended, Vigiard was the Child Exploitation Officer in charge of helping children who were victims of the very crimes he was committing.

Network

Not as many as you've heard: How many people really get their news from Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the opening keynote at the Facebook F8 conference on April 30, 2014, in San Francisco, California.
The recent controversies over Facebook's trending section and its fake-news problem have highlighted the social network's importance as a source of news—and earned it heaps of criticism, including from me, for refusing the responsibilities of a major media company. But just how important a source of news is it?

Efforts to answer that question tend to revolve around a single statistic. "The scale of impact is staggering," Vice's Nellie Bowles wrote in a Nov. 17 story about fake news. "Facebook has 1.8 billion users, and 44 percent of Americans get their news from the site, according to the Pew Research Center." Vox's Aja Romano likewise reported in November that "44 percent of all adults get their news from Facebook," again citing Pew Research. The New York Times had it that "nearly half of American adults rely on Facebook as a news source." I used the same figure, and almost the same wording, in a Sept. 9 Future Tense post.

Other prominent outlets have cited a different figure from the same Pew report. "The majority of Americans, 62 percent, say they get their news from social media," said MSNBC's Chris Hayes, in a clip that HBO's John Oliver used to set up his critique of Americans' media diet.

Comment: See also:


Attention

Racist graffiti and swastikas found on Anne Frank school in France

 Racist graffiti and swastikas found on Anne Frank school in France
© Juliette Timsitt / Facebook
The graffiti daubed on the Anne Frank nursery school in Montreuil
Swastikas and racist messages attacking Jewish and Romani people were discovered at the Anne Frank nursery school in an eastern suburb of Paris, Montreuil. French officials say the move is "despicable" and vow "severe punishment" for the perpetrators.

The Nazi symbols and stars of David, accompanied by slogans of "Juden verboten" (Jews forbidden) and "Sales juifs et Roms" (Filthy Jewish and Romani people), were found painted on the front gate and mailbox of the Anne Frank school in Montreuil, a neighborhood in the Seine-Saint-Denis region of Paris. Other graffiti called for the extermination of Jews.


The nursery, which is attended by over 100 children between three and six years old, is named after Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who wrote a famous World War II diary before being killed in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Comment: See also:


Roses

'Dr. Liza was a miracle': Russians horrified as revered humanitarian activist listed on fatal flight

Elizaveta Glinka
© Sergey Pivovarov / Sputnik
Elizaveta Glinka, head of the Fair Help Foundation
Renowned Russian humanitarian and charity activist Elizaveta Glinka, widely known as Dr. Liza, is feared dead after boarding the plane bound for Syria that crashed Sunday morning off the Sochi coast.

The 54-year-old head of the 'Fair Help' fund was supposed to travel to Latakia to deliver medical supplies to a hospital, according to the Human Rights Council.

Her fund also said that Glinka was "taking humanitarian supplies for the Tishreen university hospital in Latakia," while the Defense Ministry confirmed the passenger list included her name.

There was some confusion regarding Glinka's fate after the plane stopped over in Sochi for refueling. Several news outlets reported that she failed to board the flight after a security check.


As time passed, however, her mobile phone remained hopelessly switched off.

Comment: A republican hospital for children in Chechnya's capital of Grozny has been named after late Elizaveta Glinka, known as Dr. Liza, who died in a plane crash near Russia's Sochi on Sunday, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said.
"I have decided to name the republican children's hospital in the city of Grozny after Elizaveta [Glinka]," Kadyrov wrote in his Instagram account.

According to the Chechen leader, Dr. Liza dedicated her life to the most noble duty ever, which was saving children from conflict zones.