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Black Cat

Not just Baltimore, American cities are inundated with rats

A Rat
© Pinterest
Amid the war of words between President Donald Trump and Congressman Elijah Cummings over tweets about Baltimore, an uncomfortable truth is emerging: many American cities have a problem with rats, lots of them.

Describing the district represented by Cummings (D-Maryland), including Baltimore, as a "rat and rodent infested mess" in a tweet over the weekend, the president drew a wave of condemnation from critics, some of whom interpreted the remark as a racist dog whistle about the city's residents. Upon closer examination, however, Baltimore indeed ranks among the country's most rodent-friendly cities, though not quite the worst.

Coming in at number nine (out of 50) on an annual list of America's rattiest cities compiled by the pest control service Orkin, Baltimore has a pest problem no matter how one slices it. The battle to control the city's prolific rodent population was even chronicled in a 2017 documentary, Rat Film, which eventually aired on PBS.

During a tour of the city last year, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh - who has since resigned in disgrace - observed "Woah, you can smell the rats," in a video clip that has gone viral.

Pests in cities tend to gather where trash accumulates, and rats in particular will nest wherever there is warmth and easy access to food (and they'll eat just about anything). Though some might find the furry creatures cute, rats are no joke, carrying a range of infectious diseases, including hantavirus and hemorrhagic fever. If that wasn't bad enough, the animals also reproduce at a disconcerting rate, birthing around 60 pups per year on average, allowing them to quickly overtake certain urban areas.

Attention

Dengue fever spreads to 50 districts in Bangladesh

dengue fever victim bangladesh
© Rashed Shuman
Six-year-old Sneha stares blankly, lying on a bed at Dhaka Shishu Hospital yesterday morning. She was not admitted as the hospital is already overwhelmed with dengue patients.
DGHS says; 3 die in Dhaka;1,096 more new cases reported; city schools step up measures to combat Aedes mosquito

Dengue has spread to 50 districts with a record 1,096 patients having been diagnosed with the viral disease yesterday alone.

Three days ago, dengue cases were being reported from only 17 districts and the day before yesterday reports came in from five new districts. The number of districts with dengue cases shot up to 50 yesterday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Dengue spreads, 3 die

At least three people, including a child, died in the capital and Savar yesterday after they had been diagnosed with dengue. So far, 35 people have died after being diagnosed with the disease.

The government claims that eight people have died of dengue so far.

Comment: Mother Nature striking back?


Handcuffs

Man illegally arrested for mocking police on FB can now sue for damages

facebook
© REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro
A federal appeals court on Monday said an Ohio man who was acquitted of a felony after creating a parody Facebook page that mocked a suburban Cleveland police department can sue the city and two police officers over his arrest.

In a 3-0 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Anthony Novak can pursue several claims over his March 2016 posting of what he admitted was an "insulting parody" of the Parma police department's Facebook page.

Novak had sued for damages after being acquitted in August 2016 of disrupting police services over his parody page, which was taken down after about 12 hours.

Heart - Black

The fruits of American bombs: 327 kids killed in Afghanistan so far in 2019, as civilian casualties of foreign forces rise

coffins
© REUTERS / Omar Sobhani
A carpenter prepares coffins for sale at his shop in Kabul, Afghanistan
At least 3,812 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of this year, with 89 kids killed by airstrikes alone, a new UN report reveals. International forces were responsible for over 300 civilian deaths.

Between January and June 2019, 1,366 civilians were killed, of whom at least 327 were children, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)'s report says.

While the overall figure is down compared to last year's record high, there has been a 31 percent increase in casualties caused by government and foreign forces, with 717 Afghan civilians killed.

Ground raids and clashes were responsible for most civilian casualties, followed by air strikes and bombs. Airstrikes caused 519 civilian casualties, including 363 deaths - a 39 percent increase in airstrike casualties from the previous year, which the UN said highlights "the lethal character of this tactic."

Question

Is feminism so insecure it won't admit that boys might just be BETTER than girls at Fortnite?

Fortnite World Cup finalists
© REUTERS/Dennis Schneidler
The faces of the Fortnite World Cup finalists - 100 men, mostly teenage boys
Once again, feminists go to preposterous lengths to explain differences in performance between the sexes, even when the truth is obvious, and not hurtful in itself (but highly dangerous for the ideology).

After 40 million people spent 10 weeks qualifying for the highest-paying ever e-sports tournament, the Fortnite World Cup, with a prize fund of $30 million, an inconvenient fact emerged. Not a single one of the solo finalists who made their way to play the battle royale computer game in front of screaming crowds of thousands in Flushing Meadows, New York was a woman.

Media explanations immediately defaulted to the social discrimination templates that have been around since before consoles existed. According to the Guardian, gaming communities are "unwelcoming" while "women players are sometimes belittled and objectified, their abilities constantly questioned" when they are not being pelted with "misogynistic insults" through the in-game chat. In its analysis, Forbes spoke about unspecified but evidently unfortunate "root issues causing girls not to pick up games when they're younger" in addition to the assumed "toxicity." One of the many blue tick journalists commenting on the issue on Twitter distilled the argument to its essence: "male gamers."

Star of David

NYT reveals the truth: 'Full equality' for Palestinian citizens poses threat to 'Jewish state'

orthodox jews
© REUTERS / Finbarr O'Reilly
Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a full-page "explainer" about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign targeting Israel under the headline, "Is BDS Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign." We were surprised — and pleased — that the piece was as fair as it was.

The biggest problem with the article is the headline/framing. The Times would never run an article asking, "Is Zionism Racist?" — although there is plenty of evidence that Jewish nationalism is as inherently intolerant of non-Jews as white nationalism is of people of color.

But the article does include many paragraphs that are fair. Just look at this one. The Times acknowledges that the demand by the BDS campaign for "full equality" for Palestinian citizens of Israel is threatening to Zionists.
But many Israelis say the movement's real goal is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Full equality for Arab citizens of Israel would require overturning or amending Israeli laws that grant Jews automatic citizenship and define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Reasonable readers are sure to ask, If a state is premised on inequality, what kind of state is it? As the Times suggests, discrimination is embedded in Israel's laws. The nation-state law is a "basic law," said to be equivalent to a constitution. In Israel, Jews have more rights than the 20-25 percent of the population that is non-Jewish, and the millions of Palestinians under occupation are denied rights altogether.

Attention

Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting: Suspect Santino William Legan, 19, identified as gunman who allegedly killed 3 people - UPDATE

Garlic Festival .
© Noah Berger/AP
A road sign marks the Garlic Festival parking area in Gilroy, Calif., July 28, 2019.
A 19-year-old was identified Monday as the suspected gunman in the California festival shooting that killed at least three people and injured more than a dozen others.

Gunshots rang out Sunday just before 6 p.m. local time at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival in the city of Gilroy, some 80 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The shooter was identified as Santino William Legan, law enforcement sources confirmed to ABC News. Investigators responded the home of Legan's father in Gilroy hours after the shooting, sources said.

A 6-year-old boy was among those killed, the boy's grandmother told ABC San Francisco station KGO.

Comment: From RT:
The first gunshots were heard around 5:40pm local time, immediately causing confusion and panic at Gilroy's Christmas Hill Park in Santa Clara County.

"We heard it distinctly. I just didn't recognize the first round. The second time I did, [when] they were getting closer," a witness told local media. "I just started running. I left everything and ran."

Videos shared online show people abandoning food stands and fleeing the park in fear, with bangs heard in the background. The Gilroy Garlic Festival is a popular family event in California, and many were there with small children when the shooting started.

UPDATE 30/07/2019: Shooter made social media posts before attack:
Santino William Legan posted the caption about the book "Might is Right," which claims race determines behavior. It appeared with a photo of Smokey the Bear in front of a "fire danger" sign and also complained about overcrowding towns and paving open space to make room for "hordes" of Latinos and Silicon Valley whites.

In his last Instagram post Sunday, Legan sent a photo from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Minutes later, he shot into the crowd with an AK-47 style weapon, killing a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his mid-20s.

Under it, he wrote: "Ayyy garlic festival time" and "Come get wasted on overpriced" items. Legan's since-deleted Instagram account says he is Italian and Iranian.

The postings are among the first details that have emerged about Legan since authorities say he appeared to fire at random, sending people running and diving under tables. Police patrolling the event responded within a minute and killed Legan as he turned the weapon on them.

He legally purchased the semi-automatic assault rifle this month in Nevada, where his last address is listed. He would have been barred from buying it in California, which restricts firearms purchases to people over 21. In Nevada, the age limit is 18.

Legan grew up less than a mile from the park where the city known as the "Garlic Capital of the World" has held its three-day festival for four decades, attracting more than 100,000 people with music, food booths and cooking classes.

Authorities were looking for clues, including on social media, as to what caused the son of a prominent local family to go on a rampage. His father was a competitive runner and coach, a brother was an accomplished young boxer and his grandfather had been a supervisor in Santa Clara County.

Police said they don't know if people were targeted, but at this point, but it appears he shot indiscriminately. Twelve people were injured.

Police searched Legan's vehicle and the two-story Legan family home, leaving with paper bags. Authorities also searched an apartment they believed Legan used this month in remote northern Nevada. Officials didn't say what they found.

The city had security in place for one of the largest food fairs in the U.S. It required people to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched. Police, paramedics and firefighters were stationed throughout the festival.

But Legan didn't go through the front entrance. He cut through a fence bordering a parking lot next to a creek, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said. Some witnesses reported a second suspect, and authorities were trying to determine if he had any help.

Police arrested a 20-year-old man who claimed involvement online, but investigators determined he was just trying to get attention.



Biohazard

US govt regulator 'complicit' in radioactive leak at S. Carolina plant

radioactive materials sign
© AFP / George Frey
A leak at a Westinghouse nuclear fuel site is partly the result of inaction by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is tasked with protecting the public from radioactive waste, an analyst told RT.

"I think the NRC is complicit with companies like Westinghouse. They do minimal inspections. They miss things," he noted, adding that such incidents illustrate how the nuclear power industry "is wasting the American people's money left and right."

Recently, a rusty shipping container full of uranium-tainted trash was found to be seeping radioactive sludge into the soil at a Westinghouse fuel rod factory in South Carolina, contaminating the groundwater beneath the facility.

Watch the full report below.


Cross

'Compelled worship'? Lawsuit over Christian prayer in UK school sparks DEBATE

bible
© Global Look Press / Steve Nagy
A lawsuit targeting a UK primary school for holding prayer sessions and biblical re-enactments has divided public opinion. RT panelists sparred over the heated issue of religion's place in education.

"We must make sure that our people have access to the culture, the history - including the Bible - of our civilization," Chris McGovern, chairman of Campaign for Real Education, argued.

Others took issue with Christianity being taught in schools. Describing the case as an example of "compelled worship," Luke Gittos, a lawyer and legal editor of Spiked Online, said that the state was imposing its religious beliefs on young Britons.

An atheist couple brought the issue to light, as they are taking their children's primary school to the High Court, claiming that Christian-themed activities during assembly are unlawful. Believed to be the first of its kind in Britain, the suit argues that all children have the right to receive an education "free from religious interference."


Info

British teen reportedly fabricated rape charges against Israelis, who plan to sue

cyprus tourists
© AP Photo / Petros Karadjias
Ayia Napa in Cyprus is one of the most popular summer holiday destinations for young British people seeking sun, sea and in many cases sex. The resort is close to the British military base at Dhekelia, which is home to thousands of UK troops.

Several Israeli tourists who were falsely accused of rape by a 19-year-old British woman in the holiday resort of Ayia Napa in Cyprus have threatened to sue her for millions of pounds.

One of the men, Yona Golub, told the Times of Israel: "We will sue her for the anguish caused and for libel. I am walking in the street and people are calling me a rapist."


​An Israeli lawyer, based in Cyprus, Yaniv Habari told AFP his clients would "pursue legal action against the person behind the false accusations that led to them being unjustly detained. We will claim damages for the suffering of our clients."