Anti-coup activists holed up in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington say they have been left with no utilities after the water supply was shut off or disrupted. The municipal water provider has denied responsibility.

The already dismal conditions the activists known as the Embassy Civilian Protection Collective have had to endure after the US authorities complied with the opposition's request to shut down power in the building, have grown even worse, with water now reportedly gone as well.

Since it comes just two days after the 'ambassador' appointed by Juan Guaido, the US-backed opposition leader and self-proclaimed 'interim president' of Venezuela, demanded that the US authorities shut down the power, the activists said it was yet another joint attempt by Washington and Guaido to drive them out of the embassy.

"The US govt turned off water at Venezuela Embassy this morning to try to force the #EmbassyProtectionCollective to leave," Code Pink's Medea Benjamin wrote, while another activist, reporter Mark Hand, accused municipal water company DC Water of leaving the activists without water, and public utility Pepco for the continued blackout.

New York state is still busily chipping away at gun rights and now they've introduced Obamacare for guns. Legislators are hard at work trying to force every gun owner in the state (who isn't a cop or active military) to purchase and maintain a minimum $1 million liability insurance policy.

§ 2353. FIREARM OWNERS INSURANCE POLICIES. 1. ANY PERSON IN THIS STATE WHO SHALL OWN A FIREARM SHALL, PRIOR TO SUCH OWNERSHIP, OBTAIN AND CONTINUOUSLY MAINTAIN A POLICY OF LIABILITY INSURANCE IN AN AMOUNT NOT LESS THAN ONE MILLION DOLLARS SPECIFICALLY COVERING ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY NEGLIGENT OR WILLFUL ACTS INVOLVING THE USE OF SUCH FIREARM WHILE IT IS OWNED BY SUCH PERSON. FAILURE TO MAINTAIN SUCH INSURANCE SHALL RESULT IN THE IMMEDIATE REVOCATION OF SUCH OWNER'S REGISTRATION, LICENSE AND ANY OTHER PRIVILEGE TO OWN SUCH FIREARM. (source)

Hmmm...privilege? I had no idea it was called constitutional privileges. I'm going to have to go back and fix some articles really quickly where I called them "rights."

New York wants to make it impossible to own a gun. Although the bill clearly states it's been read twice, it's rife with grammatical errors, almost to the point of illiteracy. (I italicized them for ya.) But I digress. Under the heading "Justification" the bill states:I

Injury and death by gun has increasingly become a problem in U.S. and in New York State. In the wake of recent mass shooting incidents in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut; there has been a nationwide attention on gun control and public safety.

According to FBI Crime Report, there were 445 firearm murderin New York in 2011 and 517 firearm murder in 2010. However, there is little attention on the economic impact these shootings have on the victims and their families.

This legislation establishes and requires gun-owners to obtain and maintain liability insurance policy prior to such ownership. By having this insurance, policy in place, innocent victims of gun-related accidents and violence will be compensated for the medical care for their injuries.

In such cases where the gun was stolen, the original owner is typically not liable unless the weapon was stolen through negligence on the part of the owner.

This insurance policy will also serve as an incentive for firearm owners to implement safety measures in order to conduct the activity as safely as possible and only when necessary.

Douglas County School District received an anonymous call from a parent claiming a "perfect-storm."

A Douglas County School District letter describes a list of serious concerns from a parent who feared there may be "a repeat of Columbine" at STEM School Highlands Ranch months before Tuesday's fatal shooting.

Two shooters walked into the school at South Ridgeline Boulevard and Plaza Drive at around 1:50 p.m. Tuesday and opened fire on their classmates in "two separate locations," according to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. The shooting left one student, 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo, dead and eight others injured.

Daniel Winsor, director of choice planning at Douglas County School District, wrote the letter on Dec. 19, 2018. It was sent to STEM School Executive Director Penelope Eucker.

A teacher in San Francisco who was diagnosed with breast cancer was told she has to foot the bill for the substitute who will fill in for her while she's on medical leave.

The second-grade teacher, who was not identified by KGO, works at Glen Park Elementary school.

She is on leave through the end of the school year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Normally teachers get 10 sick days a year, but can take 100 days of medical leave. That leave comes at a cost directly from the regular teacher's paycheck, KGO reported.

A substitute's salary runs from $174.66 to $240.26 a day, the Chronicle reported.

A Palestinian died and at least 30 others were injured on Friday in clashes with Israeli troops near the Gaza Strip border, the Gaza Health Ministry spokeswoman, Wafaa Yagi, told Sputnik.

"A 24-year-old Palestinian died and 30 Palestinians were injured during clashes with the Israeli army on the eastern borders of the enclave," the spokeswoman said. Earlier, it was reported that 14 Palestinians were injured during Friday's clashes.

The Gaza border area has been a scene of violent clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli military when the Palestinians launched their anti-Israeli campaign, dubbed the Great March of Return.

The scope of the protests has noticeably decreased in the last month due to the fact that the parties to the conflict have managed, with the mediation of Egypt and the UN, to agree on easing the blockade of the Gaza Strip and other measures of social and economic support.

Do we really believe that these large-scale equity interventions are necessary and, even more naively, that they would solve more problems than they would cause, Jordan Peterson asks.

The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically-ignorant and dangerous. "Equity" is a term designed to signal "equality," in some manner, and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness, but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is equality before the law and equality of opportunity.

Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status - and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.

London's Saatchi Gallery covered two paintings which showed the text of shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam, after complaints from Muslim visitors. RT UK guests debate over whether it was the right call.

The artist SKU used the holy Arabic text, which professes belief in God and acceptance of Muhammad as God's prophet, in two works, both of which allude to the design of the US national flag and one also shows a nude woman. Some visitors complained about the pieces and called for their removal, but the gallery refused. SKU suggested a compromise solution: keep his work on display but cover them with sheets.

Whenever you speak out on a public forum against internet censorship, like the recent Instagram/Facebook banning of Louis Farrakhan, Infowars, and several right-wing pundits, you always offend two major political groups. The first group are the power-serving authoritarians who identify with the left side of the political spectrum; they argue that it's good and right to trust Silicon Valley plutocrats to regulate political speech on giant monopolistic platforms. The second group are the capitalism cheerleaders who believe there's a free market solution to every problem; they argue that these Silicon Valley giants are private companies which are completely separate from the government, so it's not accurate to refer to what they do with their own property as censorship.

Is that really true, though? Is it really accurate to claim that these sprawling corporations that nobody's been able to compete with are simply private companies, separate and distinct from the government of the nation they're based in? If you look at their behavior, it certainly doesn't seem like it.

Nineteen weeks into 2019, there have already been 15 school shootings in the US in which someone was hurt or killed.

They have occurred across the country, from Georgia to California, at elementary, middle and high schools and on college and university campuses.

Since there is no single definition for what qualifies as a school shooting, CNN set the following parameters:

• The shooting must involve at least one person being shot (not including the shooter).
• The shooting must occur on school property, which includes but is not limited to, buildings, athletic fields, parking lots, stadiums and buses.
• We included accidental discharge of a firearm as long as the first two parameters are met, except in instances where the sole shooter is law enforcement or a security officer.
• We included injuries sustained from BB guns, since the Consumer Product Safety Commission has identified them as potentially lethal.

Former Palm Bay Deputy City Manager Dave Isnardi has been arrested on charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy to possess controlled substances, including oxycodone.

Isnardi is the husband of Brevard County Commission Chair Kristine Isnardi.

Dave Isnardi is being represented at his initial appearaby Bryan Lober, an attorney who also is the County Commission vice chair. Lober said he told the Isnardis not to comment on the case to the media, and he noted that being accused of something is not the same as being guilty.

A second man, Jose Aguiar, a former candidate for the Palm Bay City Council, also was arrested Friday morning and charged with racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering. In 1997 in Massachusetts, Aguiar was convicted of conspiracy to sell cocaine and was sentenced to three years and one month in federal prison.