RTTue, 05 Jun 2018 08:51 UTC
© www.americanairlines.com
American Airlines
Mother Nature's wrath came down on an American Airlines plane after
a hail storm shattered its windshield and damaged its nose cone, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing.
American Airlines flight AA1897, which departed from San Antonio just after midnight on Sunday, was only in the air for one hour before the pilots declared an emergency. That emergency was the hail storm wreaking serious damage to the aircraft's windshield and nose cone.
Comment: Some lucky people!
More from
weather.com:
An airline spokesman said Monday that the plane was awaiting repairs for damage to the nose, windshield panels and a cockpit side window.
Passenger Jesus Esparza told KENS-TV in San Antonio he saw lightning and hail and the plane dropped "like a rollercoaster." He gave a sickness bag to another passenger who had already used one.
From
Fox 10:
RTMon, 04 Jun 2018 16:55 UTC
© Rex Features
Part of the 'massive effort'.
The police response to the alleged nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, has so far cost the taxpayer £7.5 million, according to the region's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). Revealing the stats, PCC Angus Macpherson described the police's operation as a
"massive effort," adding that the cost quoted could rise.
Wiltshire Police also revealed that
Det Sgt Nick Bailey, one of the first responding officers to find the Skripals, was contaminated at Skripal's home in the city, rather than the park bench where he found the Skripals slumped over. It was reported that at the time of their discovery on March 4, Bailey had been wearing a body camera and gloves.
At the height of the investigation, as many as 140 officers from Wiltshire Police were involved in the case, which has also seen support provided by 40 other police forces across Britain.
Comment: A costly stunt like this is only 'a bargain' if it unequivocally frames the target. And it didn't.
Neil Clark
SputnikSat, 02 Jun 2018 22:18 UTC
© Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko
Killed on Tuesday. Attending a Press Conference on Wednesday. When it comes to Lazarus-style recoveries, the 'anti-Kremlin' journalist Arkady Babchenko, makes even the Skripals look like also-rans. The fake murder stunt pulled by the Ukrainian authorities, has also made quite a few 'superior' people back home look rather stupid.
When 'news' of Babchenko's 'assassination' came out, the west's political and media elite couldn't wait to point the finger of blame at the Russian government. The same people who screech 'conspiracy theorist' at those who claim the British government scientist David Kelly, who was found in a field in Oxfordshire with his left wrist slashed, was murdered, assured us that the FSB, acting on the orders of the Evil Putin, had struck again. Not only that, they ridiculed those who wouldn't share their surety.
'But, but Porton Down, the Russians don't do this. Western conspiracy blah, blah blah. Wake. Up. fgs just wake up' tweeted Giles Dilnot, formerly of the Daily Politics.
RTThu, 31 May 2018 14:31 UTC
© Joel Goodman/ Global Look Press
Feminist Germaine Greer has come under fire after she called for rape sentences to be lowered, claiming non-consensual intercourse is merely "bad sex." She was speaking at a prominent literary festival in Wales.
Criticism is pouring through Twitter after Greer said
200 hours of community service and an 'r' tattooed on the rapist would be enough to compensate a woman for being sexually abused.
"Most rapes don't involve any injury whatsoever," Greer said while speaking at the Hay Festival.
"We are told that it is a sexually violent crime, an expert like Quentin Tarantino will tell us that when you use the word rape you're talking about violence, a throwing them down... it is one of the most violent crimes in the world. Bullshit Tarantino.
"Most rape is just lazy, just careless, insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal rights he is raping her.
It will never end up in a court of law.
"Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime,
and some rapes are, think about it as non consensual... that is bad sex. Sex where there is
no communication, no tenderness, no mention of love."
Comment: The irony is that Germaine Greer is merely following feminist logic to its logical conclusion. "Free" sex entails non-consensual sex. It wouldn't be free otherwise. And that's exactly what we've seen over the past 50 years: increasingly "free" sex, and increasingly draconic anti-sex laws to crack down on the unwanted aspects of said "free" sex.
But it's not even clear exactly what Greer was saying. She seems both to write off "most rape" as simply non-consensual sex,
and to make a distinction between violent, coerced sex and simply sex that one regrets having, or which is engaged in with no explicit consent or real thought. And the thing is, according to the feminist definition of rape, even consensual sex that is later regretted by one party can be deemed rape. So in that sense, yes, many cases of "rape" should have lesser sentences,
because they are not rape. Actually, they shouldn't have any sentence, because consensual-but-regrettable sex is not a crime. Certainly not a branding and community service. All this controversy and confusion would be cleared up if we simply stuck with a sane definition of rape.
Update (June 5): The reaction from the Feminazi Left has been swift. One feminist
wrote that Greer "can no longer be called a feminist" (lucky her!).
Also of interest is Greer's previous statements which go against radical Leftist ideology. In 2015
she made waves by saying that she did not accept that post-operative men were women. She sensibly pointed out there are distinct experiences for women that a simple surgery can't create:
"Being a woman is a bit tricky. If you didn't find your pants full of blood when you were 13 there's something important about being a woman you don't know. It's not all cake and jam."
There was a
petition to cancel the Cardiff speech by her because of her "transphobic comments." Also in 2017 she denounced the all-female school Murray Edwards Collge for allowing transgender women to attend. She again made very good points regarding her stance:
"If [Murray Edwards] really don't believe that gender is binary, then they really shouldn't be a single sex college. Their position is ridiculous. The only sane thing for them to do is to cease discriminating on the basis of assigned gender of any kind."
As we have seen, anyone who begins making sensible comments on the hysterical insanity surrounding the radical feminist ideology will immediately be shunned from the group and denounced as sexist, transphobic, etc. The PC thought police do not tolerate anyone swerving away from the accepted groupthink, so a sane intelligent thinker like Greer now is no longer allowed to be a feminist. She should feel lucky.
RTTue, 05 Jun 2018 12:04 UTC
© Francois Lenoir / Reuters
On Tuesday the court ruled that the term “spouse” in EU law includes partners of the same sex and instructed other EU countries to recognise the residency rights of all spouses regardless of whether they allow same sex marriage.
In a landmark case for marriage equality, the EU's top court, the European Court of Justice, ruled that same-sex spouses have the same residence rights as straight couples
despite the individual marriage laws of EU countries.
The highly publicized case began in 2012 when Romanian LGBT activist, Adrian Coman, and his US partner, Robert Clabourn Hamilton, who were legally married in Belgium in 2010, attempted to relocate to Coman's home country.
Romania doesn't allow same-sex marriage so immigration authorities refused to legally recognize their marriage certificate, and therefore would not give Hamilton permission to live in the country for more than three months as he could not be classified as Coman's spouse.
RTTue, 05 Jun 2018 15:29 UTC
© Aly Song / Reuters
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple
Tech legend Steve Wozniak says he is attracted to the "purity" of the idea that people around the world could one day share a single currency, despite being separated by national borders.
He echoed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently said that he believes bitcoin will become the single currency worldwide.
"I buy into what Jack Dorsey says, not that I necessarily believe it's going to happen, but because I want it to be that way, that is so pure thinking," Wozniak told CNBC on the sidelines of the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam.
© AP Photo / Thibault Camus
Pedestrians walk past a branch office of French bank Societe Generale
The US Department of Justice has been prosecuting foreign firms accused of bribery outside of the US for some while, but this is the first time a resolution has been reached jointly by US and French authorities.
US Department of Justice has issued a statement on June 4 saying that French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) and its subsidiary SGA Societe Generale Acceptance have admitted their guilt in paying $90 million in bribes to Libyan officials between 2004 and 2009 and manipulating the London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR), one of the world's "leading benchmark interest rates." The companies also agreed to pay more than $860 million in penalties based on the illegal gains, obtained by the bank in the result of these violations.
"For years, Societe Generale undermined the integrity of global markets and foreign institutions by issuing false financial data and by fraudulently securing contracts through bribery," Acting Assistant Attorney General Cronan said, commenting on the reached resolution.
Comment: A fine is a slap on the wrist, and without prosecution of people who actually committed fraud or bribery this "strong message" lacks teeth.
Maxine Waters likes to say millennials love her, but if her own campaign event is any indication, that might be more rhetoric than reality.
79-year-old "Auntie Maxine" held a Meet & Greet Tweet-A-Thon on Sunday for two hours, and while it's hard to know what she hoped the outcome would be, but the turnout seemed to be underwhelming.
"Come join top social media influencers for a tweet-a-thon in support of Auntie Maxine, our fearless champion in Congress who taught us how to reclaim our time!" the flyer read.
Comment: There is cause for celebration if this event is any indication that we may be seeing the last of Mad Maxine. A few recent examples of Maxine in action:
What makes Jordan Peterson's message importantly different and provocative is not the content of his advice and rules, but rather the manner and strength of his rationale.
Anyone who knows of University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson will find it somewhat strange that someone with such traditional, even unoriginal advice should have gained such enormous celebrity. Peterson has 1.1 million YouTube subscribers and his new book,
12 Rules For Life, has been a top Amazon seller throughout the English-speaking world.
Peterson enjoins his audiences of young people to clean their rooms, stand up straight, face evil, and do what's meaningful and right, not what's expedient. It's undoubtedly noble. But Admiral William McRaven said something like it much more succinctly when he told the University of Texas class of 2014, "If you wanna change the world, start by making your bed."
RTTue, 05 Jun 2018 14:44 UTC
© AFLO / Global Look Press
The UK must "be prepared" for more Britons to question their gender in the coming years. An NHS health boss has said that
he believes up to three per cent of the population will contact transgender health services in the future.
James Palmer, the medical director for specialized services at NHS England, said at a conference on Monday that the expansion and improvement of NHS gender health services
could cause demand to "accelerate".
"We've got to be prepared to start thinking about designing a healthcare service that will allow somewhere around one to three per cent of the population at some point in their lives having a discussion about their gender.
Referrals to adult services have increased by 240 per cent over the last five year period," he said.
Based on current estimates, 1.97million people across the UK would be using gender identity services. Roughly 1.6million of those would reside in England.
Palmer added that
no other specialists have seen such recent growth in demand quite like the gender health services. "There are currently 7,500 adults waiting for an appointment with our services. No other specialist service has seen this growth, anywhere near. As a result there is absolutely not sufficient capacity in the system."
Palmer said that
he thought such growth was "a good thing" that "people out there that want to explore their gender."
Comment: What madness. Palmer and the academic-yet-idiot doctors like him apparently didn't stop to think that perhaps the unprecedented rise of transgender cases is because the phenomenon (especially in younger people) is a social contagion - i.e., mass hysteria. Most cases of gender dysphoria in youth are temporary. Sex change operations are not, and we have no idea of the long-term effects of the various forms of "treatment". But ideology must reign supreme, so these questions are not even asked, because they might "offend" the trans "community".
See also:
Comment: Some lucky people!
More from weather.com:
From Fox 10: