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Teacher gives 7th grade students assignment: Write paper asking Congress for stricter gun control laws

hampton middle school
A 7th Grade social studies teacher tasked with teaching his students about Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, recently gave his students an assignment to write a letter to Congress supporting gun control.

Blue Lives Matter obtained a copy of the assignment.

The assignment "topic" was listed as "You are trying to persuade lawmakers to have stricter gun laws to help prevent another school shooting from taking place."

"For this assignment, you are writing a letter to the lawmakers of the United States. The purpose of this letter is to pressure lawmakers to have stricter gun laws in the United States. Your letter should contain at least five complete sentences. Make sure that you use proper grammatical skills when writing your letter," read the assignment given out by social studies teacher Corey Sanders to his students at Hampton Middle School.

Snowflake Cold

Coal plants facing closure prevented 'widespread blackouts' this winter, oh... and a little help from Russia

Snow storm
© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid - RC175385BDD0
A woman walks in the snow during a winter nor'easter storm in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., March 21, 2018.
Coal-fired power plants kept the lights on for millions of Americans during January's bomb cyclone, according to an Energy Department report warning future plant retirements could imperil grid security.

Energy analysts at DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory found that coal power kept the lights on for millions of Americans during the bomb cyclone that pummeled the eastern U.S. from late December to early January.

NETL analysts found that coal plants made up most of the incremental power utilities relied on to keep electricity flowing during the cold snap. Nuclear and oil power plants played a big role, NETL found, but coal provided 55 percent of extra power across six grid operators.

"During the worst of the storm from January 5-6, 2018, actual U.S. electricity market experience demonstrated that without the resilience of coal- and fuel oil/dual-firing plants ... the eastern United States would have suffered severe electricity shortages, likely leading to widespread blackouts," NETL researchers reported.

Eye 1

Censorship in social media: Facebook quietly announces it will fact-check political posts

zuckerberg
© Chris Ratcliffe/PA Wire
Facebook announced today that the company began fact-checking political photos and videos on Wednesday in an attempt to root out fake news. The company announced in a blog post that the changes come as a result of Facebook's plan to review "ongoing election efforts."

"By now, everyone knows the story: during the 2016 US election, foreign actors tried to undermine the integrity of the electoral process," Guy Rosen, vice president of product management at Facebook, wrote. "Their attack included taking advantage of open online platforms - such as Facebook - to divide Americans, and to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt." Rosen said although the clock cannot be turned back, "we are all responsible for making sure the same kind of attack [on] our democracy does not happen again." He said Facebook is taking its role in the effort "very, very seriously."

Heart - Black

Palestinian farmer killed by Israeli tank fire amid mass protests on Land Day, local authorities claim

Israeli tank
© Siegfried Modola / Reuters
FILE PHOTO
The IDF has confirmed they fired a tank shell at two Palestinians who approached a security fence in Gaza, hours ahead of upcoming mass protests in the area. The tank killed a local farmer, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), two suspects approached a security fence in the southern Gaza Strip in the early hours of Friday morning and engaged in "suspicious activity."

"In response, our forces fired a tank shell at them. There is a claim about a Palestinian who was killed [in the shelling]," according to the statement from the IDF.

Bad Guys

Turkish television caught deliberately mistranslating subtitles when interviewing Afrin local about YPG

afrin resident interview
© Turkish TV
A Turkish television station has been caught deliberately changing subtitles to what a local Kurdish resident in the northwest Syrian city of Afrin actually said.

Turkish TV asking an old resident of Afrin about the situation in Afrin, two weeks after Turkish-led forces and their Syrian puppets captured the city from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

The elderly man replies: "The Free Syrian Army are not free, they are thugs and looters, rapists, they raped girls..."

Rather then omitting this from their bias report, the Turkish television crew instead translated everything totally different.

Attention

Sweden retracts 'utterly crazy' government leaflet on child marriage after public uproar

Teddy bear
© CC0 / Pixabay
The leaflet was commissioned by the government and included detailed instructions for people married to children covering all spheres of life, including intimacy. However, it has caused an outrage among the Swedish public, who found that it normalized such behavior instead of preventing it.

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare has withdrawn an information brochure targeted at "new arrivals" moving to the Nordic country while married to children after it caused an uproar among politicians and ordinary Swedes alike, Swedish national broadcaster SVT reported.

X

Vote: Dutch reject 'big bro' legislation expanding surveillance powers of security agencies

Guylightpole
© Cris Toala Olivares / Reuters
Dutch said no.
The Dutch population does not want security agencies to receive more surveillance powers, official results of the referendum showed. Although only advisory, the vote sends a strong signal to the government pushing for the law.

The Electoral Council said 49.4 percent of the voters spoke out against the Intelligence and Security Law during the March 21 referendum. The legislation was supported by 46.5 percent, with four percent of those participating casting blank ballots, it added. The addition of the law on the ballot boosted voter turnout to almost 52 percent, far exceeding the minimum turnout of 30 percent required for a plebiscite to be declared valid.

The new legislation, which the opponents dubbed the 'Big Data Law,' or data mining law, provides additional powers to the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD).

Among other things, it would allow the country's two security agencies to tap telephone and internet traffic on a large scale, which would include reaching an alleged perpetrator by hacking devices of those not under suspicion.

The data obtained through such surveillance would be stored for up to three years, and the AIVD and the MIVD would be granted the right to share this information with foreign colleagues, even without performing any preliminary analysis themselves. The law would also enable the Dutch security agencies to store DNA material for people.

Comment: The government has already decided this action and it is going into effect no matter what transpires from the public. "To do justice" by the referendum "in the shortest time possible" means 'wink and pass it anyway." Sound familiar?


Snakes in Suits

A former Al Qaeda hostage was betrayed by the FBI under Comey, Mueller

ComeySchrierMueller
© ARISE LET US BE GOING
A photojournalist who was captured by Al Qaeda in Syria claims that he was betrayed by the FBI under former bureau directors Comey and Mueller in order that the bureau could gather more information about terrorists. Here's what happened:

Matt Schrier told Fox News that after he escaped from Al Qaeda in 2013, he investigated his kidnapping and is now accusing the FBI of "betraying" him.
"Not every FBI agent is bad. Some are very good people," Schrier said. "But the ones that are bad need to be weeded out. And the ones who let them be bad, and who turn their head, need to be exposed."
Schrier wants answers from the FBI agents who handled his case, and especially Robert Mueller, who was the director of the FBI during his captivity. Mueller now leads the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign.

Here's the video of Schrier's accusations:


Comment: FBI monitored the transactions while the terrorists drained his accounts. FBI sacrificed his safety in order to track Al Qaeda. FBI did nothing to rescue him because they were gathering intel at his expense. They sacrificed him.

According to another victim commenting on Matt Schrier's circumstances:
Matt's terrorist captors stole his identity, the how and why and results all provably known by our intelligence services who were happy to track him instead of his terrorist captors since his terrorist captors were using his identity. They obtained in this way a wealth of information about the terrorists, it is true, but totally at his expense, he, by the way, not being a military or intelligence operator, he being tortured the whole time. Matt was now a Department of State "perpetual" "program."

What no one counted on, what no one wanted, was that, incredibly, Matt, beaten and tortured, escaped. Instead of finding help from our intelligence services back stateside, he's been smashed down by them, dismissed by him, marginalized into the darkest of existential peripheries by them.



People

Pipeline for peace: Russia hoping to unite North & South Korea through gas project

North Korean and South Korean athletes
© Murad Sezer / Reuters
Athletes from North Korea and South Korea during the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics.
A top South Korean diplomat has confirmed that Russia could build a natural gas pipeline to her country via North Korea.

"Should the security situation on the Korean Peninsula improve, we will be able to review the pipeline natural gas (PNG) business involving the two Koreas and Russia," Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said at a Seoul forum on regional energy cooperation, as quoted by Yonhap news agency.

Attention

Six suspicious packages were sent to military and intelligence sites

Suspicious packages
© NBC News
The FBI and military authorities said Monday that they were investigating a half-dozen suspicious packages containing explosive components, sent to military and intelligence addresses in the Washington area.

The first was discovered Monday morning at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair in southwest Washington. It was quickly rendered safe, the military said.

By day's end, law enforcement officials said, similar packages turned up at other military and intelligence locations - six in all, including the CIA's mail-sorting facility, a White House mail-sorting facility in suburban Washington, a U.S. Navy facility in Dahlgren, Virginia, and two facilities at Fort Belvoir, Virginia - the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and another defense university.

Law enforcement officials said the packages were sent through the mail. Some included letters that one official described as disturbed and rambling. And each time, they said, the packages were quickly rendered safe.

Several federal officials said they did not believe that any of the packages came from Mark Anthony Conditt, who caused three weeks of terror in Austin, Texas, by placing and sending functioning bombs there.

The packages are being examined by the FBI to see if they're the work of the same person or persons, and to determine whether they were working devices or hoaxes meant to look real.