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French father jailed for raising children on diet of Coca-Cola & biscuits

coca cola
© Mike Blake/Reuters
Poor parenting and questionable dietary choices has landed a man in jail in France, after a court found him guilty of raising his two children almost entirely on fizzy drinks and biscuits.

A Limoges court found the man, who the jury heard suffered from alcohol addiction, guilty of neglect towards his three- and four-year-old sons.

According to AFP, the unnamed father came to the attention of social services and it was discovered that the children were almost exclusively being fed on a diet of sugary biscuits and Coca-Cola.

The eldest child had to have a total of seven teeth removed due to the severity of the situation.

"It's a special case, bathed in violence," said Carole Papon, a lawyer for the two children.

A psychological assessment of the children is now due to take place while they remain in foster care. Meanwhile, the pair's father will have to serve at least three months in jail over the neglect which occurred between 2016 and 2017, reported Le Parisien.

Attention

Inflammatory NYT publishes a Trump assassination short story

Trump mask thingy
© Andrew Yates
While mainstream media blame Trump's inflammatory "fake news" rhetoric for half a dozen bombs mailed to prominent Democrats and CNN, the New York Times has just run a short story envisioning Trump's assassination.

Frustrated by the failure of the Mueller investigation to turn up the requested dirt on their nemesis-in-chief, the media "resistance" asked a few spy novelists to predict a more appealing future in the Times' literary supplement. The results revealed some shoddy writing work, even putting aside their predictable endings (spoiler alert - he was colluding with the Russians all along!).

Zoe Sharp's story was apparently written while she was held hostage in a Bond movie with a bunch of Soviet bad guys. A Russian agent (of course) checks into a hotel, meets another Russian carrying a briefcase with a Makarov pistol and Stolichnaya (because Russia), and gets drunk. The next morning, he tries to shoot the president, but the gun misfires. The crisis - what will Putin think, now that I've failed him?! - is averted when a Secret Service agent lends a helping hand. Get it? It's funny, because even Trump's staff want to murder him!

Comment: The divide within the country is widening to the point that political lunatics, SJWs and MSM are falling into an abyss of their own making - taking what is left of respect and sensibility with them. The Times has proven once again it is biased and unprofessional.


Coffee

Mug shot: US Air Force still can't explain why it spends $1280 on a coffee cup

Sen. Chuck Grassley
© Alex Brandon/AP
US Senator Chuck Grassley
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) finally received a response to questions he asked the Air Force on why it was spending more than a thousand bucks on an in-flight coffee cup, and he's not all that satisfied with their explanation.
"While I appreciate that the Air Force is working to find innovations that would help save taxpayer dollars, it remains unclear why it cannot find a cheaper alternative to a $1,280 cup. Government officials have the responsibility to use taxpayer dollars efficiently. Too often, that's not the case. I intend to pursue this issue further."
Earlier this month, Grassley sent a letter to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, in which he inquired about what the Air Force calls "hot cups" - metal cups similar in size to a French press which he said cost the service $56,000 over the last three years.

As it turns out, it's even worse: The Air Force spent more than $300,000.

Ironically, the exorbitant price tag caught Grassley's eye soon after the Air Force published a public affairs story lauding a 3D printing innovation one of its squadrons made, which developed a cheaper solution to the problem of the cup's handles breaking off.

In the past, if an airman dropped a cup and the handle broke, it'd cost more than $1,200 to replace it. With 3D printing, a new handle could be made for about 50 cents.

Which led Grassley earlier this month to ask, why the hell were you spending that much on a damn coffee cup in the first place?

Comment: For this and other Pentagon crazy expenditures, see also:
Trump demands NATO allies to spend more, meanwhile Pentagon buys $1.2K mugs, $10K toilet seats


Handcuffs

Michigan gymnastics coach arrested for having public sex with 18yo team gymnast

scott vetere
© Twitter/@wxyzdetroit
University of Michigan assistant gymnastics coach Scott Vetere has resigned after being arrested for allegedly having public sex in a car with an 18-year-old team member near the university's training facilities.

The incident happened earlier in October, although reports of Vetere's arrest only emerged on Wednesday.

Police had approached the vehicle at around 9am on October 8 and found Vetere, 39, and the female student naked and engaged in sexual activity in the back seat.

The married father-of-three and the teenager were both arrested for misdemeanor disorderly conduct and indecent or obscene conduct in public.

Brick Wall

Indian govt orders ban of 827 websites with porn material amid claims it incites rape

cellphone
© Reuters / Edgard Garrido
The Indian government is going tough on porn, ordering internet service providers (ISPs) to ban hundreds of websites hosting such content. It comes amid claims it's encouraging rape as it "flourishes unabated."

A high court imposed a sweeping order which will ban people from accessing a whopping 827 porn websites.

ISPs have been told to take "immediate necessary action" to block the websites after the Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity) issued the Department of Telecom (DoT) with a notice to do so, Indian news agency Press Trust of India (PTI reports).

All providers must immediately remove pornography so they can comply with the "Hon'ble High Court order," issued at the end of September, the DoT said in its instructions for the servers.

Star of David

Liberal Israeli press says to go soft on Mohammed Bin Salman because 'peace'

haaretz bin salman headline
© Haaretz
As even Trump begins to turn on him, liberal Israelis say go soft on Mohammed Bin Salman
The horrific story of murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is continually being changed by Saudi officials. First they claimed that nothing happened and that he went out of the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. Then they claimed he died in a "fist fight" under "discussions". Immediately after, a Saudi official said that a team of 15 Saudi nationals sent to confront Khashoggi on October 2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted.

It goes on and on. After weeks of denial, the Saudis admitted his killing, but tried to frame it as a "rogue operation".

Comment:


Heart - Black

Crimean bank to wipe out debts of families of Kerch college massacre victims

kerch crimea
© REUTERS / Sergei Karpukhin
.
Crimea's largest bank will write off loans taken out by the families of the victims who died in the bloodiest school shooting in Russia's history last week in the city of Kerch.

"Russian National Commercial Bank is ready to write off all the unpaid loans to families of those who died in a polytechnic college in Kerch if the relatives apply for the procedure," the lender, which operates mostly in Crimea, announced.

The bank is planning to manage the procedure on a case by case basis with no requests being filed so far, according to the press office.

Comment: An admirable gesture for such a tragedy: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: The Strange Contagion: How Viral Thoughts and Emotions Secretly Control Us


People 2

Bettina Arndt challenging the campus rape narrative down under

Australian Human Rights Commission
© Australian Human Rights Commission photosteam.
What do senior university administrators chat about when they attend overseas conferences with others of their kind? Surely when vice-chancellors hobnob with American college presidents the conversation must sometimes stray to their troubles - particularly the costly business of managing the so-called "campus rape crisis."

So how come these smart leaders from the Australian higher education sector haven't twigged to the dangers ahead? Ripples from the fallout of the campus rape frenzy on American college campuses have travelled across the world. Back in the 1990s, there were campus protests with furious young women brandishing placards claiming one in four students are raped. The alarmist 2015 propaganda movie The Hunting Ground was screened across the country, showing serial rapists preying on college women. By 2007, the activists had achieved their main goal, with Obama requiring all publicly-funded universities to set up tribunals for determining sexual assault cases.

So American universities got into the criminal investigation business, with lower standards of proof greatly increasing the chances of conviction in date rape cases. Such cases remain a stumbling block in the highly successful and much needed feminist push for justice for rape victims. Rape allegations are now treated far more seriously, convictions are more common and attract far higher penalties. According to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, in my own state of New South Wales, numbers of sexual assault convictions have almost doubled since 1995, and over 50 percent of such convictions receive prison sentences compared to about 10 percent of other crimes.1

Eye 2

'Colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism': Google-backed smart city aims to micromanage every aspect of urban life

Sidewalk labs smart city Toronto
© YouTube / Sidewalk Toronto
A screenshot from a promotional video shows the site of Sidewalk Labs' planned 'smart city'.
A Google-backed project to build the interconnected, data-driven 'city of the future' sounds like all George Orwell's nightmares come true, and is now in the spotlight after a privacy expert resigned from the project in protest.

Toronto's Waterfront district used to be an industrial wasteland, but Sidewalk Labs - a sister company of Google - wants to turn that wasteland into a prototype 'city of the future,' where data helps planners micromanage every aspect of urban life. The planned Quayside neighborhood will house 5,000 people when built, expanding to host another 5,000 within three to four years, its creators say.

In running the neighborhood as efficiently as possible, Sidewalk Labs will utilize a range of innovative technologies. Sensors will manage street crowds and time traffic signals appropriately, cameras will watch over parks and public spaces, planners will be able to track the movement of every vehicle, person and drone, and garbage cans will monitor their owners' trash to optimize waste management.

Comment: See also: 'Smart cities' to unleash data collection that far surpasses anything seen today


Attention

Half of Yemen's population survives on foreign aid, famine imminent - UN

yemen child
© Reuters / Abduljabbar Zeyad
The famine threatening war-torn Yemen is even worse than previous estimates which already called it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The UN now estimates 14 million people are at risk.

UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock called for a humanitarian ceasefire in areas essential to aid supply and infrastructure. Because of the deteriorating situation on the ground, he said, the UN has been forced to revise upward its estimates of 11 million Yemenis on the brink of starvation two weeks ago. Now, 14 million Yemenis face "pre-famine conditions," relying on food aid for their very survival.

Most of this aid - 80 percent - arrives through the port of Hodeidah. The Houthi-controlled city has been under siege by coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia since June. The Saudis have accused regional rival Iran of arming the Houthis through the port, though Iran denies the allegations.

UK-based NGO Save the Children claims nearly two-thirds (64.5 percent) of Yemenis "don't know when or if their next meal will come," warning that those who don't die of hunger are still at risk of succumbing to disease. Yemen is in the midst of the world's largest ever cholera outbreak, a situation exacerbated by what many believe to be deliberate targeting of hospitals by coalition forces.