Today's News: January 21, 2020

World News

UN Throws Cash at North Korea to Fight “Global Warming”

The New American – A United Nations agency led by a Communist Chinese agent is sending large amounts of American taxpayer money and Western know-how to the mass-murdering dictatorship ruling North Korea, official UN documents show. Officially, at least, the cash and training is supposed to help the brutal regime in Pyongyang fight alleged man-made “climate change” and access even more UN money. But in reality, analysts suggested the UN funding would almost certainly be used to prop up dictator Kim Jong Un’s savage tyranny and lavish lifestyle.
The initial funding will be almost a million dollars, but that round of funds is supposed to help the regime unlock even more going forward. The decision to fund North Korean oppression with Western tax dollars was made last month by the UN “Green Climate Fund” (GCF).

Pompeo to Iraq: If You Kick Us Out, We Will Bury You

Global Research – The Trump administration is threatening to destroy Iraq’s economy by withholding a critical source of money that is controlled by the Federal Reserve. The threat is a response to the Iraqi parliament’s unanimous decision to end Washington’s 17 year-long military occupation. The Iraqi people and their representatives in parliament are incensed by the recent assassination of Iran’s most revered general, Qassem Soleimani, who was savagely incinerated by a Hellfire missile on the direct orders of Donald Trump. Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and his supporting MPs believe that the US committed a gross violation of Iraq’s sovereignty by killing a visiting dignitary without first obtaining the government’s permission. This is why the parliament and the prime minister have asked the administration to respect the wishes of the Iraqi people and withdraw all US troops from the country.
In response to parliament’s request, President Trump has threatened to impose harsh economic sanctions on Iraq while the State Department has issued a defiant statement that flatly rejects Iraq’s demands and refuses to even discuss the matter. Here is an excerpt from the statement:
“America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue the fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting Americans, Iraqis, and our coalition partners….At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership—not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East. …. There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership. We want to be a friend and partner to a sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq.”

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Virginia pro-gun rally: Despite anger, threats of insurrection, massive rally is carried out peacefully outside state Capitol

Washington Post – Thousands of gun-rights advocates packed the streets around the Virginia Capitol on Monday, bristling with weapons, flags and threats of insurrection but never erupting into the violence authorities had feared.
Armed militias carrying assault-style weapons marched in formation until the crowds grew too thick. Protesters without firearms filed through 17 metal detectors at a single entrance to Capitol Square, where about 6,000 people cheered fiery speeches on the Second Amendment. A far larger crowd remained outside the square, where they could keep their weapons.
This was the aftershock of last fall’s elections, when thousands of Virginia voters gave majorities in the General Assembly to Democrats who promised to enact gun-control laws. The losing side of that equation thundered through this city’s streets on Monday, backed up by self-styled patriots from all over the country.

Antifa terrorists a NO SHOW at the Virginia pro-2A rally… deep state BACKS DOWN in presence of overwhelming patriot presence

NaturalNews – The overwhelming numbers of armed patriots at the pro-2A rally in Richmond, Virginia has apparently caused Antifa terrorists and deep state operatives to back down from their plans to instigate staged violence for CNN’s cameras. While an estimated “tens of thousands” of armed patriots peacefully demonstrated at the Virginia capitol today, there were no reports of Antifa terrorists on the scene.
Antifa simply could not be found. It’s clear they decided to back down.
Remember that over the last several days, patriots have been urged to roll their cameras at all times in order to document the scene and catch Antifa terrorists or deep state operatives trying to instigate violence.
Patriots have also arrived armed, carrying literally thousands of rifles and pistols, sending a message to the deep state and its Antifa terrorism wing that violence will not be tolerated at this rally, despite the wishes of the radical Left and its anti-America media mouthpieces like NBC News or CNN.
Greg Reese, reporting for InfoWars.com, also said that he can’t even find any “anti-gunners” at the rally. Reporting from inside the FEMA cage that baby-killing Gov. Northam set up around the capitol grounds, Reese said the entire scene was dominated by pro-2A, peaceful protesters.

TRUMP TRIAL BEGINS…

AP – On the eve of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, the Senate leader proposed a compressed calendar for opening statements, White House lawyers argued for swift rejection of the “flimsy” charges and the Capitol braced for the contentious proceedings unfolding in an election year.
Final trial preparations were underway Monday on a tense day of plodding developments with Trump’s legacy — and the judgment of both parties in Congress — at stake.
The president’s legal team, in its first full filing for the impeachment court, argued that Trump did “absolutely nothing wrong” and urged the Senate to swiftly reject the “flawed″ case against him.

Trump lawyers call for immediate acquittal in legal, political defense

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday rejected the Democratic-led House of Representatives’ impeachment charges and called for their immediate dismissal by the Republican-led Senate in a memo offering a legal and political case against his removal.

Trump’s lawyers, Senate GOP allies work privately to ensure Bolton does not testify publicly

Washington Post – President Trump’s legal defense team and Senate GOP allies are quietly gaming out contingency plans should Democrats win enough votes to force witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial, including an effort to keep former national security adviser John Bolton from the spotlight, according to multiple officials familiar with the discussions.
While Republicans continue to express confidence that Democrats will fail to persuade four GOP lawmakers to break ranks with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has opposed calling any witnesses in the trial, they are readying a Plan B just in case — underscoring how uncertain they are about prevailing in a showdown over witnesses and Bolton’s possible testimony.
One option being discussed, according to a senior administration official, would be to move Bolton’s testimony to a classified setting because of national security concerns, ensuring that it is not public.

Davos: Trump decries climate ‘prophets of doom’ with Thunberg in audience

BBC – President Donald Trump has decried climate “prophets of doom” in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where sustainability is the main theme.
He called for a rejection of “predictions of the apocalypse” and said America would defend its economy.
Mr Trump did not directly name the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was in the audience.
Later, she excoriated political leaders, saying the world “in case you hadn’t noticed, is currently on fire”.
Environmental destruction is at the top of the agenda at the annual summit of the world’s decision-makers, which takes place at a Swiss ski resort.
What else did the president say?
In his keynote speech, Mr Trump said that it was a time for optimism, not pessimism, in a speech that touted his administration’s economic achievements and America’s energy boom.
Speaking of climate activists, he said: “These alarmists always demand the same thing – absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives.”
They were, he said, “the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers”

Virginia Ratifies Equal Rights Amendment

Morning Brew – On Wednesday, the Virginia state assembly ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a historic addition to the U.S. Constitution that would preserve citizens’ legal rights regardless of sex.

VA is the 38th state to approve the ERA. The amendment has now been passed by three-quarters of U.S. states, which is the threshold required to add an amendment to the Constitution.
The amendment’s advocates seek equal rights for women, including pay equity and ending discrimination against pregnant women.
The ERA’s heyday was in the 1970s. But recently, legislators and activists have reignited the fight, in part because of issues raised by the #MeToo movement.

But any celebrating lawmakers did was immediately interrupted by a call from the neighbors. The ERA is headed for a knock-down, drag-out court battle.

Clinton says ‘nobody likes’ Sanders and won’t commit to backing him if he’s nominated

CNN – Hillary Clinton blasts Sen. Bernie Sanders in a new documentary, saying “nobody likes him” and declining in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to say whether she would endorse and campaign for him if he’s the Democratic 2020 nominee.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done,” Clinton says in the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
The comments in the documentary are aimed directly at his core campaign appeal — that he’s a political outsider pitching revolutionary change.

Supreme Court Rejects Democrat Push for Fast-Track on Obamacare Suit

Newsmax – The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to consider a fast-track review of a lawsuit that threatens the Obama-era healthcare law, making it highly unlikely that the justices would decide the case before the 2020 election.
The court denied a request by 20 mainly Democrat states and the Democrat-led House of Representatives to decide quickly on a lower-court ruling that declared part of the statute unconstitutional and cast a cloud over the rest.

Economy & Business

Trump at Davos: America Is Experiencing ‘Blue-Collar Boom’

Breitbart – President Donald Trump told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday that the United States is living in the midst of a massive “blue-collar boom” that is targeting the lower classes.
“This is a blue-collar boom,” the president stated at the conference in Davos, Switzerland. “Since my election the net worth of the bottom half of wage-earners has increased by 47 percent, three times faster than the increase for the top one percent.”
“The American dream is back, bigger, better, and stronger than ever before,” he said.
“No one is benefiting more than America’s middle class,” he said. “We have created 1.2 million manufacturing and construction jobs – a number also unthinkable.”
“America’s newfound prosperity is undeniable, unprecedented and unmatched anywhere in the world,” Trump said. “America achieved this stunning turnaround not by making minor changes to a handful of policies, but by adopting a whole new approach centered entirely on the well-being of the American worker.”
“Every decision we make on taxes, trade, regulation, energy, immigration, education and more is focused on improving the lives of everyday Americans,” he said. “Only when governments put their own citizens first will people be fully invested in their national futures.”
Trump noted that his administration has doubled child tax credit for 40 million American families as part of his program to target families.

Boeing has officially stopped making 737 Max airplanes

CNN – The Boeing 737 Max is officially on hold.
The assembly line in Renton, Washington, has stopped building Boeing’s bestselling plane, the company confirmed late Monday. Boeing announced plans to temporarily halt production for an undetermined period in December, but it had not previously announced a precise day for the shutdown.
Boeing will not furlough or lay off workers because of the shutdown, but pain will ripple through its supply chain and could hurt America’s economic growth. The shutdown will make restarting production and recovering from the crisis more difficult for Boeing once it finally gets permission for the plane to fly again.
The 737 Max has been grounded since March following two fatal crashes that killed all 346 people on board. Although Boeing couldn’t deliver the 737 Max planes to customers, the company continued to build the jets, albeit at a slightly reduced pace of 42 a month. It now has about 400 completed jets parked in Washington and Texas, waiting to be delivered to airlines around the world.

Big Pharma giants meet in San Francisco and are stunned at the total collapse of society they’ve helped create

NaturalNews – There comes a point when greedily amassing all the monetary wealth you possibly can through any means possible leaves you with nothing in the end because you destroyed everything of value that was actually worth buying. This is what the pharmaceutical kingpins are discovering on the streets of San Francisco, one of America’s most iconic cities, which has become a vanquished wasteland of addiction, homelessness and filth.
During the recent JP Morgan Health Care Conference that took place there, pharmaceutical drug lords and banking moguls alike were reportedly shocked at how this once gorgeous enclave has descended into third-world “slum” status, on par with a place like Mumbai, India, or Manila, Philippines.
According to Steve Ubl, the head of an association that represents the pharmaceutical cartels, visitors to this annual conference are increasingly disgusted by what they witness in San Francisco with each passing year, as the city descends further and further into a hellish abyss.
“It comes up with our members every year,” Ubl is quoted as saying. “It gets worse and worse in terms of concentration and cost. It’s outrageous.”
Part of the problem is that pharmaceutical fat cats have made themselves obscenely wealthy by peddling synthetic poisons as “medicine.” And while they’re in San Francisco hobnobbing with other gaudy greed-bags, they have to walk around junkies giving themselves injections on the streets, or pooping on the sidewalk.
Big Pharma, as our readers well know, is the epitome of everything that’s wrong in this country, including the growing wealth disparity between the haves and the have-nots. And this chasm is amplified in a place like San Francisco, which is why some companies such as Oracle are considering holding their conferences elsewhere.

Energy & Environment

China no longer the world’s garbage dump as it plans to cut waste imports to zero this year

RT – Since China banned the import of certain types of waste in 2017, those shipments have declined by 71 percent, the country’s environmental authorities have announced.
China took in almost 13.5 million tons of rubbish last year and expects to stop the shipments altogether in the next twelve months, according to Liu Youbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
“[China will] make all-out efforts to realize zero imports by the end of 2020,” Liu said as cited by Chinese media. He added that Beijing will continue to crack down on waste smuggling, and that the campaign, launched in 2019 by the General Administration of Customs, has already “yielded positive results.”
Some local recyclers who were dependent on foreign waste have already switched to the domestic market, while Beijing wants to build more waste-to-energy plants.

Science & Technology

Clearview app lets strangers find your name, info with snap of a photo, report says

It may not be long before you’ll have to forget about walking down the street anonymously, says a New York Times report.
CNET – What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible, and its app is currently being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the US, including the FBI, says a Saturday report in The New York Times.
The app, says the Times, works by comparing a photo to a database of more than 3 billion pictures that Clearview says it’s scraped off Facebook, Venmo, YouTube and other sites. It then serves up matches, along with links to the sites where those database photos originally appeared. A name might easily be unearthed, and from there other info could be dug up online.
The size of the Clearview database dwarfs others in use by law enforcement. The FBI’s own database, which taps passport and driver’s license photos, is one of the largest, with over 641 million images of US citizens.
The Clearview app isn’t currently available to the public, but the Times says police officers and Clearview investors think it will be in the future.

Remarkable New T-Cell Discovery Can Kill Several Cancer Types in The Lab

Science Alert – The discovery of a new kind of immune cell receptor could pave the way for a new type of T-cell cancer therapy that can attack a diverse range of cancers in human patients without requiring tailored treatment.
The researchers behind the discovery emphasise that testing is still at an early stage, having been conducted only in mice and in human cells in the lab, not yet in living patients. But the preliminary results are promising, and suggest we could be on the verge of a significant advancement in T-cell therapies.

Health

Statin drugs claim to lower cholesterol but are INEFFECTIVE at preventing heart disease

NaturalNews – We’ve all had it drilled into our heads that high cholesterol is bad and bringing it down with statins can prevent a heart attack. However, that doesn’t explain why many people who take statins still end up developing cardiovascular disease. A recent study shows that there’s far more to the cardiovascular disease equation than just cholesterol; the immune system also plays a role, and statins do nothing to address this factor.
Dutch researchers carried out a study that explored the link between the immune system and cholesterol. They found that specific immune cells known as monocytes were more activated in people with high cholesterol than those whose levels were normal. These cells produce more inflammatory molecules that play a big role in cardiovascular disease development.
After patients in the study with high cholesterol underwent treatment with statins for three months and the measurements were repeated, their cholesterol numbers went down, but their immune cells’ hyperactivity showed no sign of reduction. The researchers say that the immune cells seem to “remember” the high cholesterol that they had been exposed to and continue to act accordingly. This is something they call “trained immunity,” and this was the first study to illustrate the effect under these conditions.
Next, the researchers would like to look into just how long this memory can persist and whether there are other ways of reducing the monocytes’ hyperactivity, such as via anti-inflammatory drugs.
More drugs aren’t the answer
But are more drugs really the answer here? All drugs carry side effects, and statins are certainly no exception. Known by brand names such as Zocor, Lipitor and Crestor, they’re the most widely used drugs in the world for reducing cholesterol. They’ve been linked to a serious condition known as rhabdomyolysis in which the cells of muscles become damaged. They can also increase the liver enzymes that aid digestion, leading to liver damage.
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4 dead as China confirms humans can spread new coronavirus

CNN – Officials in China are racing to contain the spread of a new virus that has left at least six people dead and sickened more than 300, after it was confirmed the infection can spread between humans.
Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected, announced a series of new measures Tuesday, including the cancellation of upcoming Lunar New Year celebrations, expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people.
Tour agencies have been banned from taking groups out of Wuhan and the number of thermal monitors and screening areas in public spaces will be increased. Traffic police will also conduct spot checks on private vehicles coming in and out of the city to look for live poultry or wild animals, after the virus was linked to a seafood and live animal market, according to a report by state media outlet the People’s Daily, citing Wuhan’s Municipal Health Commission.
The new measures come after Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered “resolute efforts to curb the spread” of the virus Monday.

Is Your Food Grown on Sewage?

Mercola – Sewage sludge, a waste product that comes from wastewater treatment facilities, is widely applied to agricultural fields as a fertilizer.
The EPA identified 352 pollutants in biosolids including metals, pharmaceuticals and flame retardants.
In a report from the U.S. Office of Inspector General, it’s concluded that the EPA is unable to assess the impact of the hundreds of unregulated pollutants applied to land via biosolids on human health and the environment.
When researchers evaluated 31 fields that had applications of sewage sludge, microplastics were found in the samples, with levels increasing on fields with higher rates of sludge applications.
While the EPA claims sewage sludge is safe, the long-term effects of sewage sludge on human health and the environment are unknown

Spending at least 2 hours in nature per week improves overall health and psychological well-being, shows study

NaturalNews – A mountain of research is giving near-conclusive evidence to the idea that exposing yourself to nature improves your physical and mental health, and the effects go beyond just giving your mood a temporary boost.
A study published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that spending at least two hours a week immersing yourself in nature is enough to positively affect you. The study reports that both men and women are more likely to feel that their physical health and psychological well-being are in a good state if they spend at least 120 minutes in nature per week.
The study used survey data from nearly 20,000 people in England. These surveys asked people about their weekly contact with nature. Their findings showed that it didn’t matter if the participants spent two hours in nature in a single day or spread it out over a week over several visits. Reports state that spending as little as 17 minutes a day in nature may have a noticeable positive effect on a person’s overall health.
In a press release, Dr. Mathew P. White, lead author and environmental psychologist, notes that anything from a small wooded area to a beach can count as nature. However, he also said that the type of natural setting does matter, stating that “there’s really good evidence to suggest that the marine environment and mountains are the top hitters.”
But you shouldn’t feel downcast if you live far from a hiking trail or a beach. White stated that the majority of “nature visits” recorded by the survey data took place within two miles of a person’s home. Visiting a local urban green space, according to White, can still be a good thing. “The park is better than walking down a busy street.”