Once again, a wave of hysteria concerning the British Labour's alleged 'anti-Semitic problem' is at a high. The target has always been leader Jeremy Corbyn and his fierce critique of Israel, considered dangerous by the more conservative Blairites and those further right in the political spectrum. Labour has been fighting for its soul, with activists trying to defend their right to oppose Israeli policy, or even Zionism, without it necessarily meaning that they are anti-Semites.

But it is of course the anti-Semitism accusation that is the most effective, and the conservative Jews are eager to make it stick. And now, international mainstream media is shamefully assisting - not only BBC and Washington Post, but also the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz.

Amanda Erickson's article in Washington Post Sunday is titled: "In a brutal open letter, Jewish leaders in Britain accuse Jeremy Corbyn of anti-Semitism". She takes the word of "Jewish leaders" for her opening sentence:

"The Labour Party has a long history of troubling behavior, according to Jewish leaders in Britain."

The leader of a depraved sex trafficking cult whose executives are "invitation-only" members of the Clinton Global Initiative has been arrested on charges of sex trafficking, conspiracy, and slavery.

When the reality of a secretive women's "self-help group" began to come to light last year, there were several questions about why it was reported members of the group were forced to submit nude photos as collateral when they joined or why they were "branded" with the founder's initials. Now, the latest reports expose this group is actually an elite sex slavery cult, and federal authorities have moved in to take out the alleged leader.

After several former members begged for law enforcement's help last October, police appeared to sit idly by without acting. However, it appears that has now changed.

The ring leader, Keith Raniere, was arrested by federal officials in Mexico, where he has lived for the past five months, one federal official said. According to the complaint, Raniere was charged with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor.

• Dmitry Peskov suggested the actors should have spoken out earlier
• 'What do you call a woman who sleeps with a man for $10m?'

Vladimir Putin's spokesman has described Hollywood actors who alleged they were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein as "prostitutes", suggesting they should have spoken out earlier.

Dmitry Peskov's comments, made during a discussion panel at a Moscow university, came in response to a question about Russian MP Leonid Slutsky, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment, prompting a public debate and comparisons with the Weinstein scandal.

Peskov said if the allegations against Slutsky were true, the women should have spoken out sooner, and suggested the claims could have been made now because sexual harassment had become "fashionable".

"If he groped you, if he harassed you, why did you remain silent? Why didn't you go to the police?" Peskov asked, echoing a widespread sentiment in Russia over the allegations.

Junior Rodríguez is used to seeing death and violence up close because he's a doctor in a public hospital in Venezuela, one of the world's most dangerous countries.

But the violence has been turning more personal for Rodríguez and the rest of the medical staff at the Dr. Luis Razetti de Barcelona University Hospital in the eastern state of Anzoátegui.

The staffers work under constant death threats made by relatives or friends of patients - some of them dangerous gang members - if the patients die.

"Most of the time that's the doctor's worst fear, that the patient dies and the relatives take it out on him," Rodriguez said in a telephone interview. "The threat of harm if the patient dies is always there. We don't have any kind of protection. You treat a person who turns out to be a criminal, and if that person decides to point a gun at you, there's nothing you can do."

Rodríguez quit the hospital months ago and wants to leave Venezuela to escape the crime and economic implosion that has brought widespread hunger to the oil-producing country. He would join the 22,000 other doctors who have fled, according to figures from the Venezuelan Medical Federation (VMF).

The news from Israel Tuesday was that the finance minister had waived all building permit and rezoning requirements so as to allow the U.S. State Department to ramp up construction on a consular building in South Jerusalem that is to become the new U.S. Embassy, perhaps as early as May.

The Times of Israel reported that Minister Moshe Kahlon said he would sign the waiver because moving the embassy is such a political priority:

"As we promised, we won't let unnecessary bureaucracy delay the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem, Israel's eternal capital," he said in a statement. "...This is a strategic diplomatic move for the State of Israel."

It's terrible. The Trump tax bill continues to inflict harm on American workers-and by harm, I mean $1,000+ bonuses and wage increases. For Walgreens, the North Korean-style torture from this legislation led to $100 million in wage increases. Mark that under "didn't happen under Obama" (via Chicago Tribune):

Walgreens will boost its hourly workers' wages by $100 million a year after similar moves by competitors, company leaders announced Wednesday.

The Deerfield-based drugstore chain will begin offering the higher pay this year, Alex Gourlay, co-chief operating officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance, said in an earnings call Wednesday. Walgreens spokesman Michael Polzin said he couldn't provide specific figures on exactly how much the move might change employees' pay.

A number of other retailers also have announced bigger paychecks for workers in recent months.

Walmart announced in January that it would increase starting pay to $11 an hour for hourly employees at a cost of $300 million. Target also raised its minimum starting pay to $11 an hour late last year and said it would increase that figure to $15 an hour by 2020.

An 11-year-old boy who only survived the Kemerovo mall blaze because father pushed him out of a window has learned that his entire family perished in the fire. Doctors say the devastated boy has found the strength to carry on.

The boy's parents and his sister died in the massive Sunday fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. The blaze, which engulfed the Winter Cherry shopping mall when dozens of children were playing and visiting the cinema, proved to be one of Russia's most deadly fires in the past decade.

The Syrian Arab Army soldiers (SAA) continue their mop-up operations in the recent regained territories of the eastern Ghouta region.

While sweeping out the liberated "Saqba" city, the Army troops managed to discover a large field hospital used by rebel groups to succor their wounded, according to video published by SANA agency.


Meanwhile in Harasta city, the Syrian security forces were capable to uncover largest medicine storage along with tunnel network beneath civilians building blocs in northeast Damascus.

A Catholic theology professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts is stirring up controversy on campus after a student journalist exposed some of his past writings arguing that Jesus was a "crossdressing," gender-fluid "drag king" who supported gay pedophilia.

Senior student Elinor Reilly first wrote about Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew, who serves as the college's Chair of New Testament Studies, in the college's independent student journal The Fenwick Review. As she explains, Liew has some slightly "unconventional" views about the Gospels.

First, and perhaps most concerning, is a 2004 article titled "Mistaken Identities but Model Faith: Rereading the Centurion, the Chap, and the Christ in Matthew 8:5-13." In the piece, Liew and co-author Theodore Jennings claim that the titular Bible passage, which is about a Roman centurion asking Jesus to help heal his servant, actually shows Jesus supporting a pederastic sexual relationship between the soldier and his servant boy. As Reilly explains:

Matthew's account, runs the argument, does not concern a centurion and his servant, but a centurion and his lover/slave. "The centurion's rhetoric about not being 'worthy' of a house visit by Jesus (8:8) may be the centurion's way of avoiding an anticipated 'usurpation' of his current boylove on the part of his new patron [Jesus]," they assert. Furthermore, "The way Matthew's Jesus seems to affirm the centurion's pederastic relationship with his pais [Author's Note: Greek for "child" or "boy"], we contend, may also be consistent with Matthew's affirmation of many sexual dissidents in her Gospel."

Ever since the Great Recession of 08-09, we have been inundated with news about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. These narratives have been amplified in recent years by the growing influence of socialism in the Western world. Bernie Sanders - the most popular socialist in the US - has galvanized his supporters by talking about the evil doings (real or imagined) of the top 1%. Unfortunately for his impressionable supporters, Bernie's understanding of wealth and income inequality is extremely limited.

With all this talk of wealth and income inequality in the past few years, I became increasingly interested in the problem myself. To gain a better understanding of the subject, I read a book called The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel. In this book, Scheidel takes the reader through a long history of inequality from the stone age to the modern era. He starts by examining inequality in groups of primates to show that hierarchy is deeply engrained within our genetic code.

Then Scheidel moves on to hunter-gatherer cultures to show that inequality was not very pronounced in the early days of our evolution but still present. Once human beings formed into civilizations about 20,000 years ago, inequality became rampant, and it has stayed that way up until this moment in time.