"... It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."....I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Now that it is the New Year—2016—it is also the year of the 2G sunset,
with the effective end date for 2G signals being Dec. 31 this year. A
lot of people have been talking about it, such as how to prepare for it,
how to approach mass radio conversions and when dealers need to start.
Lately, I’ve heard that the 2G sunset will play a role in the 2016
acquisition market.
It’s the beginning of the end for the network that delivered phone
calls during the Sydney Olympic Games but will be completely phased out
in less than a year.
Experts warn as many as 250,000 Australians are still using the network and some will be unprepared for its demise.
Telstra
will be the first carrier to switch off its 2G network on Thursday next
week, at which time anyone using a 2G mobile phone or a 2G SIM card
will no longer be able to make phone calls or send text messages. Even
calls to emergency services may no longer connect.
Hillary Clinton’s
campaign lawyer announced plans to participate in vote recounts of
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan if they take place, drawing a
rebuke from Donald Trump’s team that the Democrat is being a “sore
loser.”
If Green Party candidate Jill Stein initiates recounts in those states as she intends,
the Clinton campaign “will participate in order to ensure the process
proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” lawyer Marc Elias said
Saturday in a post on the blogging website Medium.com. He added that he doesn’t expect the action to overturn Trumps election.
Trump
focused on Stein, not Clinton, in a response. “The people have spoken
and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on
election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We
must accept this result and then look to the future,”’ he said in a
statement.
Kellyanne Conway,
who was Trump’s campaign manager and is now a senior adviser, was less
conciliatory. “What a pack of sore losers,” she said in a statement.
“After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, ‘Will
HE accept the election results?’ it turns out Team Hillary and their
new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.”
“Rather
than adhere to the tradition of graciously conceding and wishing the
winner well, they’ve opted to waste millions of dollars and dismiss the
democratic process. The people have spoken. Time to listen up.
#YesYourPresident,” Conway said.
‘Fill Her Coffers’
Trump
noted he had won 306 electoral votes on Nov. 8, to Clinton’s 232, the
best showing for a Republican since 1988, and the most counties since
1984.
JAPANESE people are bracing themselves for nuclear attack with chilling advise on what to do if Kim Jong-un presses the red button.
For the first time since North Korea began a series of nuke tests, people in Japan are being issued with terrifying instruction on how to deal with nuclear war.
A downloadable pamphlet is now available on the island nation’s civil defence website. Called “Protecting Ourselves against Armed Attacks and Terrorism,” it outlines emergency measures in the event North Korean missiles are fired at the country. It bears similarities to the creepy
Protect and Survive documents issued in Britain and Northern Ireland
during the early 1980s following the Soviet Union’s invasion of
Afghanistan. Like the UK’s booklet it give top-tips on how to avoid being fried and radiated. It urges people to take shelter indoors behind thick walls to avoid blast injuries but also radiation. Underground shopping malls would be an ideal place to take cover, it advises.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS 100% BECAUSE EVERYTHING HAS VARIABLES AND THERE ARE TRAPS, NO MATTER WHAT, IN DRAMAS THEY CALL IT FATE, IN SPORTS THEY CALL IT DESTINY, BUT I CALL IT LOVE. - HAN YEOL
LEE YOO RI (CHA MI RAE) AND LEE DONG GUN (HAN YEOL) BY TVN NO 1 CONTENTS TREND LEADER
SLOWING housing and construction
sectors, huge corporation debt and a protectionist Donald Trump all
threaten China’s good economic times.
That is the warning issued by private-intelligence firm Stratfor which predicts China’s economy is living on borrowed time with Beijing facing a series of internal and external threats.
Stratfor,
which successfully predicted Europe’s inability to cope with the global
financial crisis and the US-jihadi war, warn several factors will
impact heavily on Beijing’s economic stability over the next 12 months.
In, China’s Economy: Living on Borrowed Time, Stratfor lead analyst John Minnich predicts China’s housing and construction sectors will begin to slow by next year.
And he warns it is this very industry which holds a lot of the country’s outstanding national corporate debt.
Beijing’s
ability to cope with slow construction growth, along with skyrocketing
debt, will also be tested in coming months with company defaults and
bankruptcies set to spike in 2016, he warns.
A move towards US
protectionism, being pushed by President-elect Donald Trump will also
add to the growing pressures on the Chinese economy.
Organizers expect candlelight protests in
Seoul demanding the ouster of President Park Geun-hye over a massive
corruption scandal to swell to 1.5 million people this Saturday.
At
a press conference in central Seoul on Wednesday, organizers put the
nationwide figure at 2 million after an estimated 1 million took part
last Saturday. Police are bracing for a rise in the numbers.
Even
high-school students in the complacently wealthy Samseong-dong area of
southern Seoul issued a statement criticizing the government and seeking
the ouster of the president.
Supported by 70 percent of the
student body, the statement spoke of youngsters' "despair and rage" at
the alleged academic favors lavished on the daughter of Park's crony
Choi Soon-sil, who is at the center of the scandal.
A group of professors from the establishment Seoul National University also plan to take part in this weekend's demonstration.
Three South Korean opposition parties have agreed to seek a
parliamentary vote on a motion to impeach President Park Geun-hye over a
scandal. Local media expect the motion to be passed.
The parties agreed on Thursday night they will put it to a vote by the
end of the current parliamentary session on December 9th. They also
agreed to work hard to gain support from lawmakers of the ruling Saenuri
Party who have distanced themselves from Park.
For the motion to be passed, at least two-thirds of lawmakers must vote
for it in the 300-seat parliament. Reaching the threshold requires
support from at least 28 Saenuri members.
South Korean media reports say about 30 Saenuri lawmakers are predicted
to back the motion, increasing the likelihood that Park will be
impeached.
K-Water, South Korea's state water resources company, said Friday
that it has begun to raise funds worth about 100 billion won (US$84
million) to build the world's largest floating power-generating
facilities.
The energy company said it plans to sign deals with
institutional investors by March next year to build and manage the
40-megawatt solar power facilities inside Hapcheon Dam in Hapcheon,
about 350 kilometers south of Seoul.
The company is set to
build a 10-megawatt solar power facility and additional 30-megawatt
facility by December 2017 and December 2018, respectively, said company
spokesman Kim Tai-kwang.
He said the 40-megawatt solar power
facilities could generate enough power to provide energy for about
14,000 households near the dam.
Currently, South Korea runs 19 floating solar facilities that can generate about 18 megawatt-hour of electricity.
South Korea has been seeking to go green by slashing carbon emissions
in recent years, switching to renewable energy sources and ending its
heavy reliance on fossil fuels.
One the country’s J-16 strike fighters fired the giant missile earlier this month.
Experts
at Popular Science magazine analysed pictures of the event an estimated
the missile measured 19 feet long and was 13 inches wide.
One of the experts, Jeffrey Lin, said the launch of the missile was a “big deal”.......
The news has emerged just days
after top military chiefs revealed the Kremlin was deploying much-feared
Iskander and S-400 long-range missile defence systems deep inside
Europe.
Iskander missiles are nuclear-capable and the deployment
to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad puts vast swathes of Europe in the
crosshairs of Moscow's short-range ballistic missile programme.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday he wants to
build a relationship of trust when he meets U.S. President-elect Donald
Trump this week, stressing that the two-way alliance is the core of
Tokyo’s diplomacy and security.
Abe, set to meet Trump later on Thursday in New York, is expected to be the first foreign leader to do so since the U.S. real estate magnate’s election on Nov. 8.
The U.S.-Japan alliance “is the cornerstone of Japan’s
diplomacy and security. Only when there is trust does an alliance come
alive,” Abe told reporters before leaving Tokyo, Kyodo news agency
reported.
Trump
aide Kellyanne Conway said on Thursday the meeting would likely be
“much more informal,” given that Trump does not take over the White
House from Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama until Jan. 20.
“Any
deeper conversations about policy and the relationship between Japan
and the United States will have to wait until after the inauguration,”
she said, speaking on the CBS “This Morning” television program.
Details
about the meeting remained unclear, with Trump’s transition team not
responding to requests for comment. The meeting is expected later
Thursday after Abe arrives in the United States.
Thailand is making preparations for Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn
to ascend the throne on Dec 1, two senior military sources with
knowledge of the matter said.
The death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Oct 13 at the age of 88 has
plunged the Southeast Asian nation of 67 million people into a year of
mourning.
News of the December timeframe follows the prince's departure for
Germany at the weekend where he had personal business to attend to, one
senior military source told Reuters, adding that the prince would return
in November.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has drawn
attention for his bloody anti-drug campaigns and foul-mouthed remarks
about the United States. But what drives his actions?
"You can go to hell. Mr. Obama, you can go to hell," he told reporters at one news conference.
"Some industrialized nations such as the US and members of the EU,
are criticizing my crackdown on drugs. It's silly," he has also said.
Davao is the city where he served as mayor for about 2 decades.
Bonifacio Tan, president of the city's Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
says the local economy was at rock bottom before Duterte became mayor.
Abductions of wealthy people were rampant, and making money was risky
because it would often draw the attention of kidnappers.
"Sometimes killing, so no expansion, they were afraid," Tan says.
With uncertain new leadership in allied countries and the sabre-rattling of hostile states growing louder, Marines in the Pacific are being prepared for a coming conflict, the commanding general of 3rd Marine Division said this week.
Speaking at Marine Corps Association's Ground Dinner near Washington,
D.C., Thursday night, Maj. Gen. Richard Simcock made a plea for more
amphibious ships in the region and increased collaboration with the Navy
as the region braces anticipates a future that may include a
confrontation or contingency involving a powerful regional competitor.
"The fight that's coming, we're not going to be able to get a
hodgepodge, hillbilly organization and just throw three [Marine
Expeditionary Units] together and say that's a [Marine Expeditionary
Brigade] and we can land the landing force," he said. "We're not
training with our Navy brethren; we're not doing the things that are
going to carry us to victory in the fight that is clearly coming out of
the Pacific. Those are the biggest issues that I deal with right now."
Recent upheavals in the region, he said, included the death in
October of the 88-year-old king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, a
beloved ruler who leaves an uncertain political future in his son, the
crown prince Maha Vajiralongkorn. Meanwhile, the newly elected
Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, who took office in June, has
repeatedly made headlines with his hostility toward the U.S. and insults and rebukes to President Barack Obama.
Almost two decades after buying the hull from Ukraine in 1998, China's sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, has finally been declared combat ready.
China's aircraft carrier, as well as the rest of its rapidly modernizing navy,
puts Beijing in an elite club with the greatest naval powers in the
world. The development has raised eyebrows in the Pacific and globally,
as China ignores international law, builds and militarizes artificial islands in the South China Sea, and threatens and bullies its neighbors.
In the slides below, see how China's Liaoning stacks up to other carriers worldwide:
A GROUP of Italian hotels is
offering free accommodation to couples who conceive during their stay,
in a bid to boost the country’s low birthrate.
Ten hotels in the central region of Umbria have signed up for the initiative. According to The Local,
some will offer reimbursements to guests who can prove they got
pregnant during their stay, while others will offer a free second visit.
Couples
don’t have to be married to participate, which is causing some
controversy in the conservative region, which is the birthplace of St
Francis of Assisi.
“Giving birth to a child is an act of deep love, which should be
encouraged despite the multitude of difficulties in life,” organisers
said, according to The Local.
However, local councillor and former
mayor Claudio Ricci questioned whether the campaign was “fitting for
the public image of Assist and the promotion of the region”.
Italy
has the lowest birthrate in the European Union, registering the lowest
number of births in more than 150 years in 2015, with only eight babies
born for every 1000 people. The average child-bearing age has also risen
to more than 31.
Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln
delivered his Gettysburg Address where 50,000 soldiers were killed or
wounded in a three-day battle:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain –
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1903: “In no other place and
at no other time has the experiment of government of the people, by the
people, for the people, been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own
country.”...........
...........
Exercise in futility
Immense effort goes into the legislative process – political
campaigns, registering voters, getting to polls, voting, swearing in,
introducing bills, debating bills, voting on bills, overriding vetoes –
yet this is all an exercise in futility if only a few unelected judges
can invalidate the entire process.
For example:
The people of Arizona voted English as their official language, but
federal judges overruled. (9th Circuit, Prop. 106, March 3, 1997)
The people of Arkansas passed term limits for politicians, but
federal judges overruled. (Sup. Ct., Term Limits v Thornton, May 22,
1995)
The people of California voted to stop state-funded taxpayer
services to illegal aliens, but federal judges overruled. (Prop. 187,
Nov. 20, 1995)
The people of Colorado voted not to give special rights to
homosexuals, but federal judges overruled. (Sup. Ct. Romer v Evans,
1992)
The people of Missouri defeated a tax increase, but federal judges overruled. (8th Circuit, Missouri v Jenkins, Apr. 18, 1990)
The people of Missouri limited contributions to State candidates,
but a federal judge overruled. (8th Circuit, Shrink Pac v Nixon, Jan.
24, 2000)
The people of Missouri passed “A Woman’s Right to Know.” Governor
Bob Holden vetoed it. Legislators overrode his veto, but a federal judge
overruled. (U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright, Sept. 11, 2000)
The people of Nebraska passed a Marriage Amendment with 70 percent
of the vote, but a federal judge overruled. (U.S. District Judge Joseph
Batallion, May 12, 2005)
The people of New York voted against physician-assisted suicide, but federal judges overruled. (2nd Circuit, April 2, 1996)
The people of Washington voted against physician-assisted suicide, but federal judges overruled. (9th Circuit, March 6, 1996)
The people of Washington passed term limits for politicians, but
federal judges overruled. (Sup. Ct., Term Limits v Thornton, May 22,
1995)
The people of Montana voted by an overwhelming 74 percent to define a
marriage as between one man and one woman, but federal judge Brian
Morris overruled. (Nov. 19, 2014) Republican Rep. Steve Daines stated an
“unelected federal judge” had ignored Montanans’ wishes. (Associated
Press, Nov. 19, 2014)
A 14-year-old girl who died of cancer has been cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be “woken up” and cured in the future after winning a landmark court case in her final days.
The girl’s divorced parents had disagreed over whether her wish to be frozen should be followed, so the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, asked a High Court judge to intervene.
In a heartbreaking letter to the court, she said: “I don’t want to die but I know I am going to...I want to live longer...I want to have this chance.”
Representative Tim Ryan, a little-known Democrat from Ohio, said
Thursday he’ll challenge Nancy Pelosi to lead a party that’s reeling
from a disappointing Election Day.
Ryan’s announcement that he’ll
run against Pelosi pits him against the only woman to ever serve as
House Speaker and comes after more than a half-dozen better-known
colleagues in recent years shied away from the challenge. He declared
his candidacy hours after she told reporters that she’d had support from
more than two-thirds of the House’s roughly 200 Democratic members.
Ryan,
43, was undeterred, saying that the Democratic Party’s disappointing
performance in last week’s election demanded new leadership.
“Over
the last 18 years, Democrats have only been in the majority of the
House of Representatives for two terms, and last week’s election results
set us back even further," said Ryan, of Youngstown. “We have lost over
60 seats since 2010. We have the fewest Democrats in state and federal
offices since Reconstruction. At this time of fear and disillusionment,
we owe it to our constituencies to listen and bring a new voice into
leadership.”
Lotte Group on Wednesday agreed to hand
over a golf course in southwestern Korea so a U.S. Terminal
High-Altitude Area Defense battery can be stationed there.
The
Defense Ministry offered a land swap whereby Lotte hands over the Lotte
Skyhill Country Club in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, which was
picked in late September as the site for the THAAD battery, in exchange
for a military site in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province.
If things go on as scheduled, the THAAD battery will be stationed in Seongju between July and September next year.
The South Korean crime action film "Master" starring top actors Lee
Byung-hun, Kang Dong-won and Kim Woo-bin has been sold to 31 countries
before its release, according to its local distributor Friday.
The movie's distribution rights have been sold to companies in the
United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Taiwan, Thailand,
the Philippines and other countries, CJ Entertainment said.
The
action flick had reportedly garnered huge interest when it was
showcased at the American Film Market (AFM) held in Santa Monica from
Nov. 2-9.
The film's foreign release will kick off in the U.S.
in December. Then it will hit Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in that
order starting the following month.
We just had a tsunami-triggering 8.2 earthquake off of Chile’s north
coast, a 5.8 earthquake off the coast of Panama, a 5.1 earthquake in
southern California, and a dormant volcano in Peru has awakened for the first time in 40 years, but scientists assure us that none of these events are related and that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.
Image: Ring of Fire (Wiki Commons).Even
though all of these events took place on the Ring of Fire, which is the
most seismically-active area of the entire planet, the “experts”
promise us that “the odds are overwhelming” that they are not related to
one another. So do you believe them? A few days ago, I wrote an
article entitled “12 Signs That Something Big Is Happening To The Earth’s Crust Under North And South America“.
This was before the earthquakes that struck off the coasts of Chile and
Panama. It appeared to me, as a “non-expert”, that seismic activity
was really starting to heat up in North and South America – especially
along the Ring of Fire. But it turns out that I and everyone else that
was concerned about all of these earthquakes was flat wrong. According
to the experts, it is just a giant coincidence that earthquakes are
popping off like firecrackers all along the west coasts of North and
South America.
A driverless bus has been tested on a public road for the first time in Japan.
An IT company was contracted to carry out the trial run in Senboku City, Akita Prefecture.
The city is designated as a special zone for promoting deregulation and economic revitalization.
An electric bus from France was used for Sunday's experiment. It has no
driver's seat or steering wheel, and uses GPS to travel along a fixed
route.
The bus automatically stops when it detects a human being or an obstacle.
Thirty-six people took turns to ride on the bus, which traveled back and
forth 3 times along a 400-meter stretch of road near Lake Tazawa.
A flotilla of Russian
warships arrived off the coast of Syria on Saturday, readying for a
large-scale land and sea assault on the city of Aleppo.
The eight-strong battle group, led by Moscow’s only aircraft
carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and accompanied by a nuclear-powered missile
cruiser, had provocatively travelled through the English Channel to reach the eastern Mediterranean.
Sergei Artamonov,
commander of the Kuznetsov, confirmed to Russia-1 television station via
videolink on Saturday that aircraft were already taking off from the
ship's deck for reconnaissance flights.
"Flights are being carried out from the deck... they are working on coordination with the shore port," he said.
Asked whether foreign aircraft were flying over the ships,
Vladislav Malakhovsky, commander of the Peter the Great missile cruiser,
said: "they are afraid to come closer than 50 kilometres away,
realising very well how powerful the nuclear cruiser is."
The warships will be deployed to the Mediterranean for at least six months, the pro-government Syrian website al-Masdar News reported, quoting a military source.
An agreement reached between South Korea and the United States
earlier this year to deepen space cooperation has taken effect, paving
the way for closer ties between the allies in the exploration of the
cosmos, the foreign ministry said Friday.
In April, Seoul and
Washington signed the "Framework Agreement for Cooperation in
Aeronautics and the Exploration and Use of Airspace and Outer Space for
Civil and Peaceful Purposes."
South Korea became the first Asian country to sign such a deal with the U.S., known as a leader in space exploration.
The agreement went into effect on Thursday and it is expected to
accelerate and deepen cooperation between the two countries, the
ministry said.
The agreement covers private sector cooperation
for peaceful purposes ranging from space science, earth and outer space
observation. It also covers the transfer of technology, data and
relevant intellectual property rights.
Since the agreement was reached, the allies have been beefing up efforts to strengthen their tie-ups in space.
In April, they held their second space cooperation committee meeting.
In a related move, scientists and researchers from the two countries
also formed a working group in May to discuss detailed action plans, the
ministry said.
A MARRIED PE teacher has been arrested and faces charges of having sexual intercourse with
male students. Port Barre Police Department Chief Deon Boudreaux said 45-year-old Nicole Aymond was arrested today on three counts of prohibited sexual conduct.
Police launched an investigation last week after receiving a call from a concerned parent at Port Barre High School, Louisiana, where Aymond is also the girls’ basketball coach.
Boudreaux told KLFY
that for several years his department had received reports of teachers
having sex with students from the school, but this was the first time
someone provided any evidence.
He said that after speaking to two male students, officers found nude photos of Aymond on their phones.
After
Aymond was arrested, she admitted top officers that she sex with two
pupils when police showed that they had the nude photographs.
“She
told them she had sexual relationship with two of the young men and a
third young man not a sexual relationship, she did kiss on him and
things like that,’ Boudreaux told KADN.
Kept away in Mr Raymond Chong’s bedroom in his two-storey apartment
is an outfit so precious, he keeps it in a vacuum-sealed bag.
It is a blue jumpsuit with a plunging neckline and adorned with sequins.
While the 54-year-old remisier probably wouldn’t be caught dead
wearing this flamboyant outfit in public now, it holds a special memory
for him — it was what he wore when he was crowned Singapore’s disco king
over 30 years ago.
In 1980, when he was 18, Mr Chong beat more than 30 other dancers
from all over the world to clinch second place in the EMI World Disco
Dancing Championship.
“My friend who owned a boutique gave me the costume as a gift and
told me I would look good dancing in it,” says Mr Chong, who is married
with four children.
“I’m quite surprised that after all these years, it still fits!”
Recently, a video of Mr Chong’s fancy footwork made its rounds
online. New York fashion magazine Hint shared a video of the 1980
competition on Nov 4. It now has more than six million views.
Up to 1 million South Koreans took to the streets of central Seoul on
Saturday, demanding President Park Geun-hye’s resignation over a scandal
involving her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil.
In the largest
anti-government rally in decades, protestors flooded the streets
running through City Hall, Gwangwhamun Square and Anguk Station, turning
the area into a vast sea of candlelight in the evening. Streets just
hundreds of meters from Park’s presidential residence of Cheong Wa Dae
were also packed, with participants chanting “Park Geun-hye resign!”
Organizers said over 1 million gathered for the protest, but the police’s estimate was 260,000.
At Cheong Wa Dae, lights were seen turned on deep into the night.
The
embattled president watched Saturday’s colossal protest from her
residence, while her staff, in a somber mood, discussed how to cope with
the situation, sources at the presidential office said.
Many
had expected Saturday’s rally to be a watershed moment for Park’s
presidency in a crisis sparked by allegations that she let civilian
friend, Choi, manipulate power from behind the scenes. Park’s approval
ratings have sunken to an abysmal 5 percent, with a majority of people
demanding her immediate removal from office.
While Cheong Wa Dae
kept silent Sunday, political parties on both sides of the aisle were
seen clearly affected by the overwhelming demonstration of public anger.
SCIENTISTS have claimed that death may not be as final as we once feared
– and that humans have souls that can leave the body after their hosts
kick the bucket.
It may sound like a supernatural myth, but the idea that human consciousness lives on after death has been put forward by a number of well-respected scientists.
And the British scientist at the forefront of the eerie theory claims
that humans have souls which don't die along with the body.
We many not know exactly what consciousness is, but physicist Sir
Roger Penrose believes that it's just a packet of information stored at a
quantum - or sub-atomic - level.
Sensationally, he claims to have found evidence that this
information, which is stored in microtubules within human cells, leaves
the body after a person dies.
Sir Roger has argued that when a person dies temporarily, this
quantum information is released into the universe, only to return to the
body's cells if the host is brought back to life.
He argues that this explains why people can have near-death
experiences, and believes that this quantum information amounts to a
soul leaving the body.
The physics expert said: "If the patient dies, it's possible that
this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps
indefinitely, as a soul."
US share
prices ended lower on Friday, as many investors continue to worry about
the outcome of Tuesday's US presidential election.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell for seven sessions in a row. The
index declined 42 points, or 0.2 percent, closing at 17,888. That's the
lowest level since July.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq and the broader S&P 500 index closed lower for
nine straight sessions. It's the longest decline in 36 years for the
S&P 500.
Analysts say investors are concerned about the tightening presidential
race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Many market participants are afraid that Trump's policies could badly
affect the American economy. The policies include a hardline approach to
illegal immigrants and protectionist trade policies.
Winning the World Series brings a lot of positives: Being a part of baseball history; Getting to party with your teammates; and, really, the whole city; Meeting the President.
After breaking their 108-year World Series drought, the Cubs got at least one more perk: Going on "Saturday Night Live." Anthony Rizzo put together an entire entourage to head out:
Rizzo, David Ross and Dexter Fowler
appeared at the end of Weekend Update and, after introducing themselves
with broad smiles, the crowd met a special guest ... Bill Murray.
Dressed as a Cubs-themed barbershop quartet, the group discussed winning
the singing competition show, "The Voice," with Fowler deadpanning that
it was the "best thing" they had ever done.
Manny Pacquiao returned to the
ring to score a unanimous decision over champion Jessie Vargas to claim
the WBO welterweight title in Las Vegas.
Former eight-division world champion Pacquiao, 37, had announced his retirement after beating Timothy Bradley in April.
The judges scored the bout 114-113, 118-109 and 118-109 in favour of the veteran Filipino.
His former world title rival Floyd Mayweather Jr had a ringside seat.
"Not bad," Mayweather said, giving Pacquiao a thumbs up after the fight.
Mayweather beat Pacquiao to become the undisputed welterweight champion in May 2015 in what was billed as "the fight of the century".
"I invited him to be here tonight,'' Pacquiao said. When asked if the two could meet again, he replied: "We'll see."
Pacquiao returned to what he called his "passion" after quitting boxing to win election to the senate in the Philippines.
The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a US$1 million
(S$1.38 million) gift from Qatar while Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton was US secretary of state without informing the State
Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or
significantly increased support from foreign governments.
Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday
of Mr Bill Clinton, Mrs Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet
the former US president in person the following year to present him the
check, according to an e-mail from a foundation official to Mrs Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, Mr John Podesta.
The e-mail, among thousands hacked from Mr Podesta's account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.
Most South Koreans will be rooting for Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's elections, as they think Mr Trump
is trouble.
Analysts say Mrs Clinton, familiar to South Koreans as she has made
many official visits to the country, is deemed a better choice then her
Republican rival Donald Trump as she supports the United States-Korea
security alliance and will follow through with existing policies.
The most important among these is the deployment of the Terminal
High-Altitude Area Defence anti-missile system, which protects South
Korea from North Korea's nuclear threat.
Sogang University's political science professor Kim Jae Chun said Mrs
Clinton is "a better fit for us" as she would keep the security alliance
and crucial trade deals. "She might have a more robust approach towards
North Korea and do more to engage them, but won't go so far as risking
military conflict."
CHINA launched its most powerful
rocket ever on Thursday, state media said, as the country presses on
with a program which has seen it become a major space power.
The
Long March 5 rocket can carry up to 25 tons — around the same weight as
16 cars — into low earth orbit (LEO), state-run China Radio
International said.
By contrast the US’s Saturn V, which delivered
astronauts to the moon in 1969, was designed to deliver some 154 tons
of payload to LEO.
The Chinese rocket launched from the recently
built Wenchang launch centre on the tropical island province of Hainan
at 8:43pm, according to the official Xinhua news service.
Its components were transported to the island by ship, as they were too heavy to be moved by rail, reports said.
The
rocket’s design will be used in future years to propel the core module
of China’s permanent space station, as well as lunar and Mars missions.
The
project has suffered from years of delays. Test firings of the rocket
in a secret facility near Beijing saw several failures, reported the South China Morning Post newspaper citing official sources.
An authoritative educational United States portal site indicated Korea's Ulleung Island on the East Sea as Japanese territory.
Infobase Publishing recorded the rocky steep-sided island as Japanese soil while omitting Korea's easternmost islands Dokdo in a map on its educational website, Facts on File.
This raised the ire of Koreans, as even Japan does not claim sovereignty over Ulleung Island although it has done so over Dokdo.
"I have hardly found any books or internet sites that show Ulleung Island as belonging to Japan. It is regrettable that a popular educational portal does so," Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) founder Park Gi-tae said on Friday.
"We requested Infobase Publishing to correct the evident mistake. We also asked it to identify the waters between Korea and Japan as the East Sea, not just Sea of Japan. The blunders should be rectified as soon as possible because so many refer to the data."
More than 10,000 Korean citizens currently live on the 72.9-square-kilometer Ulleung, the country's ninth-largest island. The body of water surrounding the island is dubbed the East Sea in Korean while it is known in English as the Sea of Japan.
Call it the electoral map color counter-coup.
There once was a day when Democrats were red and Republicans were blue.
WND thinks that was apt, and, beginning today, it will be reflected
in the 2016 electoral map at the oldest independent online news source.
That, of course, is exactly the opposite of what the rest of the
media do in lockstep – from television stations to networks to the
printed pages and even the bloggers.
But WND is resisting the change to what the New York Times
called the “international tradition” and will have the Republican
states on election night 2016 represented in blue, and the left, liberal
or progressives – the Democrats – in red.
Donald Trump has edged ahead of Hillary Clinton in a major national poll taken in the wake of her latest email scandal.
Mr Trump led by one percentage point in the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll released on Tuesday.
The results were within the poll's margin of error, placing the two candidates in a statistical tie.
But it was the first time the Republican nominee has led in that poll
since May, and he was recently down by as much as 12 points.
Mr Trump led 46 per cent to 45 per cent. He had trailed by one point in the same poll as of Sunday.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green candidate Jill
Stein polled the low single digits. The new survey was taken from Oct 27
to Oct 30. That meant many of those questioned had a chance to react to
FBI Director James Comey's announcement, on Oct 28, that new Clinton-related emails had been found.
Those emails could be "pertinent" to an FBI investigation
into Mrs Clinton's use of a private server while she was US Secretary of
State.
The
U.S. State Department halted the planned sale of some 26,000 assault
rifles to the Philippines' national police after Senator Ben Cardin said
he would oppose it, Senate aides told Reuters on Monday.
Aides
said Cardin, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, was reluctant for the United States to provide the weapons
given concerns about human rights violations in the Philippines.
News
of the thwarting of the weapons sale was met with disappointment among
the Philippine police and government on Tuesday, but they said
alternative suppliers would be found. Police spokesman Dionardo Carlos
said the Philippines had yet to be notified about the sale being
stopped.
The
relationship between the United States and the Philippines, a long-time
ally, has been complicated lately by President Rodrigo Duterte's angry
reaction to criticism from Washington of his violent battle to rid the
country of illegal drugs.
More
than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected
vigilantes in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte
took office on June 30.
The
U.S. State Department informs Congress when international weapons sales
are in the works. Aides said Foreign Relations committee staff informed
State that Cardin would oppose the deal during the department's
prenotification process for the sale of 26,000-27,000 assault rifles,
stopping the deal.
U.S. State Department officials did not comment.
Ronald
dela Rosa, the Philippine national police chief and staunch supporter
of the war on drugs, said he liked the American rifle, but suggested
China as an alternative small-arms provider.
The Obama administration has resettled 13,210 Syrian refugees into
the United States since the beginning of 2016 – an increase of 675
percent over the same 10-month period in 2015.
Of those, 13,100
(99.1 percent) are Muslims – 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other
Muslims – and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent)
are Yazidis.
During the Jan.-Oct. period in 2015, 1,705 Syrian
refugees were admitted, of whom 1,664 (97.5 percent) were Muslims and 29
(1.7 percent) were Christians.
Meanwhile the surge of Syrian
refugee admissions initiated by the administration last February has
continued into the new fiscal year, now one month-old: A total of 1,297
were resettled during October – a 593 percent increase over the 187
admitted in October 2015.
October’s arrivals were once again
dominated by Sunni Muslims, accounting for 1,263 (97.3 percent) of the
total. Another seven were Shi’a Muslims and 12 were other Muslims. The
rest of the October intake comprised 15 (1.1 percent) Christians – eight
Orthodox, four Catholics and three refugees self-described simply as
Christians.
That comes after last fiscal year saw a total of
12,587 Syrian refugees admitted, of whom 12,363 (98.2 percent) were
Sunnis, and 68 (0.5 percent) were Christians, according to State
Department Refugee Processing Center data.
The rest of the Syrian
refugees admitted during FY2016 were 103 other Muslims, 20 Shi’a
Muslims, 24 Yazidis, eight refugees with religion given as “other,” and
one with “no religion.”
Syrians of all religious and ethnic groups
have been victimized in the costly civil war, which has pitted a regime
dominated by Allawites – a sect of Shi’a Islam – and its Shi’a allies
against mostly Sunni rebel groups. A Sunni-majority population and
Christian and other minorities are caught in between, with some
supporting warring groups on either side.
But jihadists among the
rebels, and especially the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL),
have also targeted Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in
particular. Last March 17, Secretary of State John Kerry announced,
in line with a legislative requirement, that the treatment of
Christians and other minorities in areas controlled by ISIS amounts to
genocide.
Since that genocide determination, the Obama
administration has resettled a total of 12,743 Syrian refugees in the
U.S., but only 74 (0.58 percent) of them are Christians, and only 24
(0.18 percent) of them are Yazidis. The vast majority – 12,637, or 99.16
percent – are Muslims, including 12,516 Sunnis.
According to the
1951 Refugee Convention, the five criteria for considering refugee
status applications are persecution for reasons of religion, race,
nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social
group.
Although religious persecution is one of those five
official vulnerability criteria, administration officials say the U.S.
does not and should not prioritize any particular religious affiliation
when considering Syrians’ applications.
When the civil war began
in March 2011, an estimated 74 percent of the Syrian population was
Sunni Muslim and an estimated 10 percent was Christian.
Therefore
if the U.S. admitted Christian Syrian refugees in proportion to the
population, roughly 1,260 Christians would have been resettled in the
United States in FY2016. Just 68 were.
Estimates of the number of
Christians who have fled their country since 2011 vary, but the
international Christian charity Barnabas Fund estimated some 600,000
earlier this year, the European Parliament said at least 700,000 had
done so, and a Chaldean Catholic bishop from Aleppo last March put the
figure at at least one million.
One new report estimates that the Syrian Christian population has dropped from 1.25 million in 2011 to less than 500,000 this year.
The U.S. is not alone in admitting such a small
proportion of Christians and Yazidis. Data in Britain, released as a
result of a freedom of information request, found that 1.9 percent of 2,659 Syrian refugees resettled there between September 2015 and the end of June this year were Christians, and 0.5 percent were Yazidis.
Then-British Prime Minister David Cameron said last fall Britain would take in 20,000 Syrian refugees.
“Whilst
the U.K. government points out that it outsources its selection of
vulnerable refugees to the U.N., its toleration of this level of
discrimination against some of the most vulnerable people in the world
is itself morally wrong,” said the Barnabas Fund when the figures
emerged this month.
“For it to tolerate this when Christians and
Yazidis are actually facing genocide in Syria and Iraq is a national
scandal of historic proportions.”
Like Britain, the U.S. relies
largely on the U.N. refugee agency for initial referral of refugee
applicants. But advocacy and humanitarian groups say many Syrian
Christians fear for their safety in U.N. camps, where accounts of
Christians being targeted by Muslim fellow refugees have been recorded.
As
a result, many tend to avoid registering with the agency, relying
instead on networks of churches or Christian charities in countries
surrounding Syria, especially Lebanon.
While
two officers frisk the woman, another grabs the old man by the legs.
The man lies flat and stretches his legs, making it difficult for the
officer to move him. But the officer eventually manages to drag him
away.
The couple's granddaughter, who
screamed throughout the video, tries to stop the officers who are
holding the woman, screaming "Don't do that." The officer replies "Don't
touch me."
The woman, while being led out, sits down to prevent the officers moving her.
Like some kind of 21st century Willy Wonka, audacious entrepreneur Elon Musk
chose a prime spot on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot tour to
unveil his latest attempt to energize an industry — roofs that generate
solar power but look like no other.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity,
showcased a line of high-design solar roof tiles that would replace
clunky solar panels and tie into an upgraded version of the Tesla
wall-mounted battery for those times when the sun doesn’t shine. The
glass solar shingles resemble French slate, Tuscan barrel tile or more
conventional roofing materials with a textured or smooth surface.
“The key is to make solar look good,” Musk said during the
product introduction staged on the old set of ABC’s “Desperate
Housewives” series, where he had re-roofed four of the Wisteria Lane
houses. “If this is done right, all roofs will have solar.”
Chinese ships are no longer at the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea
and Philippine boats can resume fishing, the Philippine defense
minister said on Friday, calling the Chinese departure a “welcome
development.”
Philippine fishermen can access the shoal unimpeded for the
first time in four years, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said,
capping off a startling turnaround in ties since his country rattled China by challenging its maritime claims at an international tribunal.
The departure of the Chinese coast guard ships comes after
President Rodrigo Duterte’s high-profile visit to Beijing and his
repeated requests for China to end its blockade of the shoal, a tranquil lagoon rich in fish stocks.
“Since three days ago there are no longer Chinese ships,
coast guard or navy, in the Scarborough area,” Lorenzana told reporters.
“If the Chinese ships have left, then it means our fishermen can resume fishing in the area.”
Though the Scarborough Shoal is comprised of only a few
rocks poking above the sea some 124 nautical miles off the Philippine
mainland, it is symbolic of Manila’s efforts to assert its maritime
sovereignty claims.
Donald Trump doesn’t do understatement, so it was predictable on Friday evening that he should liken to Watergate the reopening of the FBI investigation
into Hillary Clinton’s supposedly insecure use of her private email
server. But this was more than the latest twist in an unpleasant
campaign that has little to do with policy or a vision for America, and
much to do with the character defects, real or imagined, of the two
principal candidates. This could change a race that appeared, otherwise,
to be over.
Since Mr Trump faced embarrassment with the disclosure of a tape of
him expressing repulsive sentiments about women, followed by a parade of
females of varying degrees of credibility alleging he had attempted
sexual improprieties with them, the Clinton camp had treated their
victory as a fait accompli. The opinion polls had shown a narrowing, but
still significant, gap between the candidates in the days before the
FBI announcement: Mr Trump was around five points behind in RealClearPolitics’s national poll average
on Friday morning. Now, voters have a Democratic candidate who, if
elected, could before long be on trial and, if convicted, in jail.
On September 5, 2006, Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff
writer for the Jewish Press, and Hillary Clinton was running for a
shoo-in re-election as a U.S. senator. Her trip making the rounds of
editorial boards brought her to Brooklyn to meet the editorial board of
the Jewish Press.
The tape was never released and has only been heard by the
small handful of Jewish Press staffers in the room. According to
Chomsky, his old-school audiocassette is the only existent copy and no
one has heard it since 2006, until today when he played it for the
Observer.
The tape is 45 minutes and contains much that is no longer
relevant, such as analysis of the re-election battle that Sen. Joe
Lieberman was then facing in Connecticut. But a seemingly throwaway
remark about elections in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority
has taken on new relevance amid persistent accusations in the
presidential campaign by Clinton’s Republican opponent Donald Trump that
the current election is “rigged.”
Speaking to the Jewish Press about the January 25, 2006,
election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (the legislature
of the Palestinian National Authority), Clinton weighed in about the
result, which was a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the
U.S.-preferred Fatah (45 seats).
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian
territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And
if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure
that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
South Korea's president is engulfed in a political scandal with
plotlines straight out of a soap opera: rumors of secret advisers,
nepotism and ill-gotten gains, plus a whiff of sex. There's even a
Korean Rasputin and talk of a mysterious clique called the "eight
fairies."
Park Geun-hye, South Korea's first female president and daughter of
the military dictator who turned the country into an industrial
powerhouse, is facing the biggest challenge of her turbulent tenure.
The essence of the scandal is this: It has emerged that Park,
notoriously aloof even to her top aides, has been taking private counsel
from Choi Soon-sil, a woman she's known for four decades. Despite
having no official position and no security clearance, Choi seems to
have advised Park on everything from her wardrobe to speeches about the
dream of reunification with North Korea.
Calls for her resignation - and even impeachment - are resonating from
across the political spectrum, and her approval ratings have dropped to
a record low of 17 percent, according to two polls released Friday.
On Friday, Park directed all of her top advisers to resign en masse,
with her spokesman saying a reshuffle would take place, the Yonhap news
agency reported. Kim Jae-won, senior presidential secretary for
political affairs, told a parliamentary session that Park's chief of
staff had already stepped down.
It's not clear, however, whether it will be enough.
"Park Geun-hye's leadership is on the brink of collapse," said Yoo
Chang-sun, a left-leaning political analyst. Shin Yool, a right-leaning
professor at Myongji University, called it the "biggest crisis" since
South Korea was founded 70 years ago. "The president has lost her
ability to function as leader."
Choi is the daughter of the late Choi Tae-min, who was a kind of
shaman-fortune teller described in a 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in
Seoul as "a charismatic pastor." Locally, he's seen as a "Korean
Rasputin" who once held sway over Park after her mother was assassinated
in 1974.
When Marina Amaral looks
at a black-and-white photograph, she doesn’t see 50 shades of grey. She
sees the true colours of the scene captured by the photographer –
sometimes more than a century ago – and she sets about recreating them.
Amaral is a 22-year-old Brazilian artist whose digital
colourisations of iconic black-and-white images have become an internet
sensation. Her work breathes new life into old pictures, stripping away
the years and giving them an astonishing immediacy.
ACE and Sheila* are a married couple who say they are tasked with
killing drug users and drug dealers as part of the Philippine
President’s war on drugs.
The couple claim their death squad
receives up to $100 per kill from the police, and with four children to
support they say it’s the only way they can make that sort of money.
Known as ‘The Punisher’,
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has promised to kill more than
100,000 drug users and fill Manila Bay with their bodies.
Ace and Sheila spoke to SBS Dateline. This is how they do their jobs, in their own words. ACE
So our boss contacts us by phone and tells us we need to do a job on someone.
They
might be ordinary people, but they’re all pretty much the same — drug
pushers or crooks. Or they’ve crossed our boss. We bring down those
types of people.
"Some
countries are getting more inward-looking in their policies.
Protectionism is rising and forces against globalisation are posing an
emerging risk," he added.
While
Xi did not single anyone out, Republican candidate Donald Trump has
threatened to erect trade barriers to Chinese products if elected US
president. Britain's vote to leave the European Union has been
interpreted partly as a backlash against globalisation.
While
China's economy has been running out of steam of late --although it is
still the world's second largest -- India is now the fastest-growing
major economy and its GDP is expected to increase 7.6 percent in
2016–17.
- 'Deeper bonds' -
Modi said it was vital the BRICS nations increased cooperation by dismantling trade barriers and developing infrastructure.
"I
think I speak for all when I say that through a common vision and
collective action, we will create and sustain deeper bonds among BRICS
nations, develop our economies and secure our societies," he said.
"While
our achievements have been substantial, we need to sustain the positive
direction and strong momentum of intra-BRICS engagement."
Xi said BRICS countries had much to be proud of and had contributed to more than 50 percent of global growth in the last decade.
