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FedEx, in another error, misses delivery of Huawei package to US


CNBC
Sun, 23 Jun 2019 12:33 UTC
FedEx
FedEx said on Sunday an operational error prevented a Huawei Technologies package from being delivered to the United States, just weeks after the U.S. delivery firm said an error led to the Chinese firm's packages being misdirected.

"The package in question was mistakenly returned to the shipper, and we apologize for this operational error," FedEx told Reuters in an emailed statement. A company spokeswoman confirmed that the package was U.S. bound but declined to say what it contained.

Huawei, the world's biggest telecoms gear maker, is at the center of a bruising trade dispute between Washington and Beijing. China launched an investigation into FedEx earlier this month over Huawei parcels delivered to the wrong address, without giving details about the deliveries in question.

China's state news agency Xinhua had said back then that the investigation into FedEx over misdirected mail should not be regarded as retaliation against the U.S. company, amid the trade spat.
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Star of David

Sick Gazan newborns die alone in Jerusalem hospital as Israel denies mom access: 'I went home devastated'


RT
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 18:11 UTC
Hiba Swailam gaza babies die israel hospital
© RT
Hiba Swailam
A Gazan mother told RT that Israel denied her access to her three ill newborn babies because her travel permit expired. Instead, she learned by phone that two of her kids died, and waited months to see her surviving daughter.

Diagnosed with early labor, Hiba Swailam, 24, obtained a permit from Israel to leave Gaza and travel to Jerusalem, where she gave birth to seriously underweight triplets at Makassed Hospital. She could not stay with her children because the permit had expired, so the young mother was forced to return home.

"I told them I at least want to stay to breastfeed the babies, and they said 'No,'" Hiba told RT.

Comment: Hiba was treated atrociously by Israeli bureaucracy, but there is nothing extraordinary about it. It is business as usual for the psychopaths overseeing the Gaza open-air prison.

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Arrow Up

ABC launches legal challenge to Australian police for criminal 'Afghan Files' raid

Lorna Knowles
ABC
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 18:08 UTC
afp abc
© ABC News: Brendan Esposito
AFP officers talk with ABC lawyers during the June 5 raid.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers who raided the ABC's head office were searching for evidence - including fingerprints - to prove that an ABC reporter had committed criminal offences, court documents have revealed.

An application by the ABC to the Federal Court of Australia said the AFP obtained a search warrant authorising them to search for evidence to prove a suspicion that investigative journalist Dan Oakes had allegedly committed the offences of receiving stolen goods and unlawfully obtaining military information.

The warrant authorised the AFP to search for and record "fingerprints found at the premises" and to take samples from the ABC for "forensic purposes".

It also authorised the AFP to "add, copy, delete or alter other data ... found in the course of a search".

The AFP raid on June 5 related to a series of stories by Oakes and producer Sam Clark known as the Afghan Files.

The stories detailed the alleged unlawful killings of unarmed men and children by Australian elite special forces in Afghanistan and were based on hundreds of pages of leaked documents.

On Monday, the ABC launched a legal challenge to the warrant used to raid its Sydney headquarters, seeking a declaration from the Federal Court that the warrant was invalid and the search and seizure of more than 80 items relating to the Afghan Files was unlawful.
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Megaphone

Clueless Guardian columnist unwittingly gives Jordan Peterson's new platform free advertising

Libby Emmons and Barrett Wilson
The Post Millennial
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 17:20 UTC
jordan peterson
© Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons
Dr. Jordan Peterson
In a rambling column today, Martha Gill, one of The Guardian's authoritarian scribes, attempts to take Dr. Jordan Peterson to task for launching Thinkspot-a new free speech-friendly social media platform.

Gill begins by listing a litany of hypothetical protests by imaginary "free speech" advocates: "Young people today can't cope with reality and if you try to tell them about it you'll get arrested" and other things that no reasonable person would ever say. Spiked! columnist Andrew Doyle was quick to point this out on Twitter.

Comment:

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Brick Wall

Google claims new Supreme Court ruling hurts PragerU's censorship claim

Josh Hammer
The Daily Wire
Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:01 UTC
google laptop
© Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
As The Daily Wire first reported back in 2017, PragerU filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Google, its parent company, for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." As James Barrett of The Daily Wire noted at the time:
This week PragerU, a conservative not-for-profit organization founded by Dennis Prager, filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube for "unlawfully censoring its educational videos and discriminating against its right to freedom of speech." In an interview with The Daily Wire on Friday, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit underscored the far-reaching free speech implications of her organization's legal action against what has become "two of the most important public forums in the world" and explained why their legal team feels "very strongly" that they can win. ...

In a press release issued Tuesday, PragerU's legal team - which includes Harvard's Alan Dershowitz and former California Governor Pete Wilson and Eric George of Browne George Ross, among several others - laid out the rationale for the lawsuit, which was prompted by Google/YouTube restricting or "demonitizing" over 50 PragerU videos for what YouTube claims is "inappropriate" content for younger audiences.

Comment: Rather interesting that Google is going this route. What they are essentially arguing is that they are a publisher, not a utility, meaning they can pick and choose what is published on their platforms (as opposed to a utility, like the phone company, who have no say on how their service is used by the public). However, if they're claiming publisher status, this means that they are putting themselves in the position of being responsible for everything that is put onto their platform by users, in the same way that a newspaper would be held responsible for what they publish. It's a rather precarious position to put themselves in and could only make their job as content police more difficult. It also means that the future of YouTube, Google and other social media platforms will likely be more censorious than it currently is.

See also:

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NPC

Coddling the American mind: Maryland school board eliminates class rank to fight a 'competitive environment'


The College Fix
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 09:41 UTC
high school class
A school board in Maryland has voted to eliminate high school class rank ... which will allow valedictorians and salutatorians to be chosen on factors other than academics.

The Anne Arundel board vote was close - 5 to 4 - in favor of the abolition. The Capital Gazette notes class rank "has been criticized for fostering a competitive environment in high schools," putting "unnecessary" stress on students. This view was shared by board member Melissa Ellis who related a tale of a student who turned down an internship at Johns Hopkins just so she could take another (advanced) course in order to up her grade point average.

Board Vice President Josie Urrea, a high school senior, has even been seeking out students to testify in favor of the change - those who claim class rankings are "detrimental to their mental health." Some students will take advanced classes just to get the weighted GPA, they say.
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Bomb

Kurdish doctor warns of 'ticking time bomb' as Finnish pundits push for return of Jihadi relatives


Sputnik
Fri, 21 Jun 2019 12:29 UTC
kurdish isis women
© AFP/ Delil Souleiman
Finland's neighbours, Norway and Sweden, have already started taking back so-called "Daesh* kids" for humanitarian reasons, as officials declared they are powerless to stop their nationals from returning.

A group of 15 legal experts from leading universities in Finland and abroad have joined the ongoing debate on the fate of Finnish "Daesh brides" and "Daesh children" by reminding that it is constitutionally prohibited to prevent Finnish citizens from entering the country.

Citing the Finnish constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, the pundits stressed in an opinion piece in the daily Helsingin Sanomat newspaper that no person may be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state in which he is a national.

Comment: See also:

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People

India: Fresh triple talaq bill introduced in Lok Sabha, Oppositon members protest


The Economic Times
Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2019 became the first legislation to be tabled in Parliament by the Narendra Modi dispensation in its second term.
Triple Talaq
The government on Friday introduced the fresh triple talaq bill in the Lok Sabha amid vehement protests by opposition members who claimed that it was violative of the Constitution.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2019 became the first legislation to be tabled in Parliament by the Narendra Modi dispensation in its second term, with Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asserting the legislation was a must for gender equality and justice.

The bill was introduced following a division of votes, with 186 members supporting and 74 opposing it.

Comment:
The Big Picture - TRIPLE TALAQ Bill

Arguments favouring the bill:
  • Bill is needed so that even Muslim women also get equality on par with other Muslim men.
  • Triple talaq adversely impact rights of women to a life of dignity and is against constitutional principles such as gender equality, secularism, international laws etc.
  • The penal measure acts as a "necessary deterrent"
  • It significantly empowers Muslim women.
  • The practice of triple talaq has continued despite the Supreme Court order terming it void.
  • The practice is arbitrary and, therefore, unconstitutional
  • The law is about justice and respect for women and is not about any religion or community
  • It protects the rights of Muslim women against arbitrary divorce
  • Instant triple talaq is viewed as sinful and improper by a large section of the community itself.
  • The fine amount could be awarded as maintenance or subsistence.
Arguments opposing the bill:
  • It is well established that criminalising something does not have any deterrent effect on its practice.
  • Since marriage is a civil contract, the procedures to be followed on its breakdown should also be of civil nature only.
  • Civil redress mechanisms must ensure that Muslim women are able to negotiate for their rights both within and outside of the marriage
  • The harsh punishment defies the doctrine of proportionality.
  • Three years in prison of the convicted husband will end up penalising the already aggrieved wife and children too.
  • The punishment will aggravate the insecurity and alienation of the Indian Muslim community
  • In the recent Supreme Court judgement, it never said that triple talaq is to be criminally punished.
  • Invoke a secular law that already exists: Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), 2005.
  • Parliament should have passed a law stating that the utterance of the words "talaq, talaq, talaq" would amount to "domestic violence" as defined in the PWDVA.
  • The PWDVA was conceived as a law that ensures speedy relief - ideally within three months - to an aggrieved woman
  • While PWDVA is civil in nature, it has a reasonably stringent penal provision built into it
Concerns:
  • It could be just a piece of legislation rather than a kind than a kind of relief to the women.
  • Some representatives have given it a political and religious color.
  • Some Muslim women's groups raised concerns about "maintenance" if the husband is sent to jail.
  • The mutual divorce provision is missing in the proposed law and needs to be debated.
Time has come to put an end to the suffering of Muslim women who have been at the receiving end of instant talaq for several years. More than 20 Islamic countries have already banned the practice.


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Black Magic

Pipeline from foster care to child sex trafficking highlighted in State Department report

Petr Svab
The Epoch Times
Thu, 20 Jun 2019 20:15 UTC
US State Department Logo
The State Department's annual report on human trafficking pinpointed the prevalence of foster care history among child sex trafficking victims in the United States.

While in many other countries, the report listed foster care among the tools used to protect victims of human trafficking, "in the United States, traffickers prey upon children in the foster care system," it stated (pdf).

"Recent reports have consistently indicated that a large number of victims of child sex trafficking were at one time in the foster care system."

Just one federally funded trafficking hotline received nearly 120,000 calls, texts, and other messages and identified close to 11,000 potential trafficking cases in fiscal 2018. The hotline reported more than 3,400 cases to law enforcement and was notified about more than 1,000 investigations that were opened as a result.

Among people vulnerable to trafficking in the United States, the report listed children in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, including foster care; runaway and homeless youth; unaccompanied foreign national children without lawful immigration status; American Indians and Alaska Natives; and drug addicts.

"Advocates reported a growing trend of traffickers targeting victims with disabilities and an increase in the use of online social media platforms to recruit and advertise victims of human trafficking," it said.
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Stock Down

US retailers warn against China tariffs: Higher costs for consumers, "impossible" to find alternative suppliers


Business Wire
Fri, 21 Jun 2019 11:58 UTC
chess pawns us china trade war tariffs
© Getty Images
The National Retail Federation today urged the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to avoid 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese goods and released a new study examining key product categories and the negative impact on American consumers.

"We support efforts to achieve better trade deals, but American consumers shouldn't be caught in the crosshairs," NRF Senior Vice President of Government Relations David French said during testimony prepared for a USTR hearing this afternoon. "It's time to reevaluate a strategy based solely on tariffs and work with our allies to put international pressure on China."

"For most of the consumer products on this list, there are very few alternative sources of supply," French added. "It would be impossible for all market participants in our industry to simultaneously move sourcing to other countries. The capacity does not exist ... In the short term, retailers would be forced to continue to use Chinese suppliers and pass on higher costs to their customers - just in time for the holiday shopping season."

Comment: See also:

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