Barry Neufeld dares to say out loud what millions of Canadians are thinking privately but are too afraid to express publicly.

An elected school trustee on the Chilliwack Board of Education, Mr Neufeld has questioned the value and merit of the new "sexual orientation and gender identity" (SOGI) additions to the BC school curriculum.

Should Republicans boycott the Republican Party?

Should conservatives and moderates and right-of-center independents and libertarian-leaning folks do likewise?

That's the unsolicited advice blurted out in a recent Atlantic opinion piece.

"Boycott the GOP," shouts the headline; the blurb states the thesis as "If conservatives want to save the GOP from itself, they need to vote mindlessly and mechanically against its nominees."

Mindlessly? Mechanically? Against its own nominees?

One might easily dismiss such a crazy idea as just another in a long line of sincerely spoken suggestions from progressives that conservatives, for their own good, should slit their wrists. But the authors of this blunt opinion, Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, are two of the more clear-headed scribes in all of political journalism.

Or were? You know, before contracting Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Carnival festivities took over Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, as revelers danced and drank at block parties with names like "fire in the underpants," despite an extended crime wave in the city and a spike in yellow fever cases throughout Brazil.

Over 6 million people, including 1.5 million visitors, are expected to take to the streets of Rio for the annual celebrations, which pit the city's 13 best samba schools against one another in ornate parades that can cost over $2 million a piece.

To launch the 'world's biggest party' on Friday, officials handed a glittering key to the city to King Momo, a figurehead who presides over the partying and who, according to legend, was expelled from Mount Olympus before moving to Rio, the so-called "wonderful city."

But the celebrations this year come amid escalating violence.

Gains made after police began a 'pacification' program in 2008, pushing drug gangs out of favelas, have been unraveling. An economic crisis dried up funding, and critics say the government did not make good on promised social advances for the slums.

Reports of shootings averaged 22 per day in January 2018, up from 16 last year, said Fogo Cruzado, a group which tracks armed violence in Rio.

Article in Global Times complains of irregular deliveries of gas from Central Asia; hinting at preference for Russian gas.

As the giant Power of Siberia pipeline intended to transport natural gas from Yakutia and the Irkutsk areas of Russia to China approaches completion, with Gazprom saying that it is now two-thirds complete, the semi-official Chinese newspaper Global Times has published an article complaining about irregularities in the supply of gas from China's traditional Central Asian gas suppliers, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

As the sixth round of the negotiations on North American Free Trade Agreement begin next week in Montreal, Canada, the controversy over exactly what a new agreement might involve-if there is one at all-continues to generate debate.

As the NAFTA renegotiations were about to start, the Canadian government publicly stated its core objectives for a renewed North American Free Trade Agreement.

These included making NAFTA more progressive by bringing strong labor safeguards and enhanced environmental provisions into the core of the agreement; adding a new chapter on gender rights (and another on Indigenous issues, in line with Canada's commitment to improving relationship with its Indigenous peoples), and reforming the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process-a system through which investors can sue nations for alleged discriminatory practices- "to ensure that governments have an unassailable right to regulate in the public interest."

The Russian national is accused by U.S. authorities of running an online cybercrime marketplace.

Police in Thailand announced Friday they have arrested a Russian national accused by U.S. authorities of running an online cybercrime marketplace where everything from stolen credit card information to hardware for compromising ATM machines could be purchased.

Police said that Sergey Medvedev was arrested at his Bangkok apartment on Feb. 2 at the request of U.S. authorities.

The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday announced indictments against 36 people accused of being active in the Infraud Organization - founded in 2010 and operated under the slogan "In Fraud We Trust" - which was an anonymous online forum that the department described as a "one-stop shop for cybercriminals." It said it had nearly 11,000 members who traded more than 4.3 million credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts worldwide, leading to losses of more than $530 million for legitimate users and businesses.

The U.S. indictment described Medvedev, 31, as the group's co-founder along with Svyatoslav Bondarenko, and said he had operated a payment system for the forum's members. It said Medvedev became the website's owner and administrator when Bondarenko went missing in 2015.

Thai Police Maj. Nuthapong Rattanamongkolsak, the arresting officer, said U.S. officials had tracked the group for several years but only recently started to make arrests.

"Before the operation could be ready, they had to recheck their targets in various countries," Nutthapong said, adding that the case against the Infraud Organization began in 2014 when a U.S. Homeland Security officer sent an undercover agent to sign up as a member of the Dark Web forum.

On Thursday, 13 of the wanted persons were taken into custody across the globe, including in California, New York and Alabama. Suspects arrested in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Kosovo and Serbia are awaiting extradition.

Medvedev will be extradited to face prosecution in the U.S., Nutthapong said.

A Thai police statement said they seized 29 electronic items from Medvedev's Bangkok apartment, while the Infraud Organization's main servers were seized Tuesday in Paris.

The police statement said officers were able to arrest Medvedev by performing stakeouts, behavioral analyses, and by investigating his online activity.

Nutthapong said Thai police are tracking several other similar online syndicates.

Last year, Thai authorities arrested the alleged operator of Alphabay, a massive Dark Web marketplace where illicit items such as narcotics and guns could be sold or purchased by anyone, unlike Infraud, which vetted its members. The alleged Alphabay administrator, 26-year-old Canadian Alexandre Cazes, was found dead in his Thai prison cell shortly after his arrest, a suicide by hanging, according to Thai police.

US President Donald Trump has often been accused of misogyny both before and throughout his time in office, but he has largely ignored the message of the #MeToo movement, until now.

Trump began Saturday morning with his almost daily tweetstorm of talking points, ranging from US unemployment statistics, to alleging the Democrats are playing political hardball with their use of language in their response memo to Republican allegations of FBI and DoJ corruption in the Russian collusion investigation.

Macy's recently announced that they would be releasing a hijabi-friendly clothing line, called the Verona Collection. Shocking to only coastal elites, the public response was not a particularly positive one. Hundreds of social media users pointed out the absurdity of watching Macy's stand with Islamic "fundamentalists" (Also known as "Muslims who follow Islam") pushing Sharia modesty law as women in Iran protest for their right to remove their headscarves.

I shared in their sentiment. There is nothing progressive about promoting the hijab in the free West. It is a symbol of declining freedom. It is a symbol of the oppression and subjugation of Muslim women across the world. It is a symbol of our tendency to exoticize something that should be ignored, if not actively countered.

And most of all? It is a symbol of adherence to an ideology that calls for the subjugation of the entire world under its laws. That is the reason I hate seeing the hijab. Not that women covering their hair is in and of itself a problem at all.

I wrote about this same topic quite recently, when the "Nike Pro Hijab" was proclaimed by Time Magazine as a top invention of 2017.

A German defense official warned the country's navy is running out of combat-capable vessels and will be unable to deploy overseas. He said that several frigates and auxiliary ships were already decommissioned due to their age.

"The Navy is running out of deployment-capable ships," Hans-Peter Bartels, chief of the German parliament's defense committee, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. He said that the problem has snowballed over time, because old ships were taken out of service but no replacement vessels were provided.

Bartels, an influential Social Democratic Party (SPD) MP, said that six out of fifteen frigates were already decommissioned, adding that "none of the new Type-125 frigates are able to join the navy." Auxiliary ships suffered the same fate, with two German Navy replenishment vessels, 'Berlin' and 'Bonn', being sent for a 1.5-year refit.

Julian Assange has issued a savage rebuke to Newsweek journalist Michael Hayden for being duped by a fake Twitter account impersonating the Wikileaks founder.

Hayden had responded to a tweet supporting US president Donald Trump from Assange impersonator @TheRealJulian. The fake account wrote: "Keep doing what you're doing Mr. President and know that the entire world is behind you!"

Despite the nature of the comment being completely out of character, Hayden took it at face value and he accused the Australian of being "one of those MAGA randos that rushes into Trump's replies to kiss up".