Today's News: June 26, 2018

World News

Austria deploys police and troops for immigration exercise on border
Reuters – Austria deployed police, soldiers and Black Hawk military helicopters on Tuesday in an exercise, overseen by the far-right interior minister, which enacted the arrival of hundreds of migrants on its border with Slovenia.
The drill, designed to show Austria’s preparedness for any repeat of Europe’s migration crisis, dovetailed with the right-wing government’s efforts to discourage migrants from setting off to find a home in central Europe.
Austria took in more than 1 percent of its population in asylum seekers during the 2015-2016 migration crisis, and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives won last year’s election pledging to prevent a repeat of that influx. They govern in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party.
“A state that in the worst case cannot protect its borders loses its credibility,” Interior Minister Herbert Kickl of the Freedom Party told reporters.

Thousands of Swedes are inserting microchips into themselves – here’s why
They’ve been inserting NFC chips somewhere between the thumb and the index finger. These are the same microchips that have been used to track animals and packages.
Thousands of people in Sweden have inserted microchips, which can function as contactless credit cards, key cards and even rail cards, into their bodies. Once the chip is underneath your skin, there is no longer any need to worry about misplacing a card or carrying a heavy wallet. But for many people, the idea of carrying a microchip in their body feels more dystopian than practical.

‘Naked hermit’ who lived on secluded island for nearly 3 decades forced back to civilization
Fox – An elderly Japanese man who has lived naked on a secluded island for 29 years – only venturing out for water, rice cakes and supplies once a week – has been forced back into civilization.
Masafumi Nagasaki, 82, ventured to the island of Sotobanari, in the Yaeyama Islands near Taiwan, in 1989 and lived by himself until he made headlines in 2012 when Reuters did a profile on the “naked hermit.”
Nagasaki told Reuters in 2012 that he wished to die on the island that has been his home for so long.
“Finding a place to die is an important thing to do, and I’ve decided here is the place for me,” he said at the time.
“Here, on the island I don’t do what people tell me to do, I just follow nature’s rules. You can’t dominate nature so you have to obey it completely,” he explained to Reuters.
When he first arrived to the island, Nagasaki wore clothes but a strong typhoon destroyed his belongings.
Despite his wishes to die on the island, Alvaro Cerezo, a blogger who spent five days with Nagasaki, told News.com.au that Nagasaki was evicted from the island by authorities in April and placed in government housing in Ishigaki, Japan.
“They called the police and they took him back to civilization and that’s it. He couldn’t even fight back because he was weak. They won’t allow him to return.”
Nagasaki reportedly suffered from the flu.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Supreme Court Upholds Trump’s Travel Ban In 5-4 Ruling
Huff Post – The court’s five conservatives backed the third iteration of a Trump policy to crack down on immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

Supreme Court rules in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers: A breakdown of NIFLA v. Becerra
Fox – In a 5-4 vote on June 26, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, arguing that a California law passed in 2015, which requires the centers to inform clients about free or low-cost abortion services, is probably a violation of free speech.
The news comes after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in November 2017. Oral arguments officially began in March.

REPORT: Russians Flock to Trump Properties to Give Birth to U.S. Citizens
DML News – “Russians Flock to Trump Properties to Give Birth to U.S. Citizens” is the title on the article published days ago by The Daily Beast. The popular left-wing news agency is no friend to conservatives or Donald J. Trump, and so the title of this article is a bit overplayed to say the least. But strip Trump’s name out of the article, and try to focus solely on the much bigger issue at hand: BIRTH TOURISM.
A DML News reader sent me this article because they were unhappy about the attack on Trump. I found the birth tourism issue much more troubling, and took the time to look into the Miami-based medical center.
On the website, which is written entirely in Russian but can be translated by using Google Chrome, the company touts the following message: “Give the child the best before his birth. Medical obstetrics and gynecology center. Sunny Medical Miami will provide full support of pregnancy
any complexity and birth with the best Russian-speaking doctors.”

California Considers Creating A Fake News Advisory Group
CBS – California is considering creating a “fake news” advisory group in order to monitor information posted and spread on social media.
Senate Bill 1424 would require the California Attorney General to create the advisory committee by April 1, 2019. It would need to consist of at least one person from the Department of Justice, representatives from social media providers, civil liberties advocates, and First Amendment scholars.

Arizona Border Patrol Agents Rescue 57 Illegal Immigrants in Record Heat
PJ Media – Border Patrol agents rescued a large number of distressed Central American migrants abandoned by smugglers in 108 degree heat on Friday near the Mexican border in Arizona.
The group of 57 illegal aliens hailed from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and included a teenaged pregnant female as well as a one-year-old child:

Veteran News

UPDATE: Disgruntled veteran sets himself on fire outside Georgia Capitol, GSP says
Disgruntled with the U.S. Veterans Administration, a veteran set himself on fire outside the state Capitol in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday, according to the Georgia State Patrol.
“He was strapped with some homemade incendiary devices (and) firecrackers, and doused himself with some kind of flammable liquid” before lighting the fireworks, he said.

Energy & Environment

A new supervolcano is brewing under Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire
Fox – Something unexpected has been gradually making itself known to geologists in the United States. A huge mass of molten rock is creeping upwards beneath the nation’s north eastern states.
“The upwelling we detected is like a hot-air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” says Rutgers University geophysicist Professor Vadim Levin.
Traces of the brooding mass only became evident through a large-scale new seismic study.
The idea that there may be a super volcano brewing under Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire is something of a surprise.

Judge throws out SF and Oakland climate suits against big oil
A federal judge Monday tossed out two groundbreaking lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland that sought to hold some of the world’s largest oil companies liable for climate change.
In an exhaustive, 16-page ruling that touched on such scientific matters as the ice age and early observations of carbon dioxide, U.S. District Judge William Alsup acknowledged the problem of a warming planet but said it is just too big for the courts to solve.

Science & Technology

Illicit drone flights surge along US-Mexico border as smugglers hunt for soft spots
Seattle Times – Smugglers are using video cameras and small drones to spot vulnerabilities along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the Department of Homeland Security is struggling to stop them.
Reports of unmanned aircraft flying along the Southwest border have spiked in recent months, with more than three dozen sightings since October, when the current fiscal year began. That data point is on a course to quadruple from the previous year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where officials say they are concerned that criminal groups are using the aircraft for surveillance while seeking paths to traffic drugs and other illicit material into the United States.
“They’re probably trying to get eyeballs on agents out in the field and see where soft areas are,” said James Thom, acting operations director for CBP’s Air and Marine Operations Center outside Los Angeles. “To date, I don’t know that we’ve successfully been able to detect and track drone activity.”

CRISPR Gene Editing Can Trigger Cancer, Two Studies Warn
Mercola – CRISPR-Cas9, a form of “molecular scissors,” allows for .very precise DNA editing, i.e., the removal, addition or altering of sections of a DNA sequence
While CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing is more precise in that you can target a specific area of the genome, two recent studies warn the gene editing process can trigger cancer.
When you cut the two double helix strands of the DNA, the injury triggers the cell to activate a gene called p53 — a “biochemical first-aid kit” that either mends the DNA break or signals the cell to self-destruct; so, either the genome edit is mended or the cell dies.
In instances where the cell survives and accepts the edit, it does so because it has dysfunctional p53, and p53 dysfunction has been shown to significantly increase your risk of cancer.
CRISPR stock dropped between 5 and 13 percent within days of the findings’ publication

Gardening, Farming & Homesteading

Farmers in America are killing themselves in staggering numbers
CBS – “Think about trying to live today on the income you had 15 years ago.” That’s how agriculture expert Chris Hurt describes the plight facing U.S. farmers today.
The unequal economy that’s emerged over the past decade, combined with patchy access to health care in rural areas, have had a severe impact on the people growing America’s food. Recent data shows just how much. Farmers are dying by suicide at a higher rate than any other occupational group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health

America approves its first ever marijuana-based drug to treat seizures – and it comes in the form of a strawberry-flavored syrup
Daily Mail – US health regulators on Monday approved the first prescription drug made from marijuana, a milestone that could spur more research into a drug that remains illegal under federal law, despite growing legalization for recreational and medical use.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the medication, called Epidiolex, to treat two rare forms of epilepsy that begin in childhood. But it’s not quite medical marijuana.
The strawberry-flavored syrup is a purified form of a chemical ingredient found in the cannabis plant – but not the one that gets users high. It’s not yet clear why the ingredient, called cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces seizures in some people with epilepsy.

Sea sponges may hold key to fighting killer infections
Sun Sentinel – The solution to a vexing — and deadly — problem for modern medicine could be lying on the ocean floor.
Just like some insects have evolved to resist synthetic chemical insecticides, new infectious diseases have emerged over the last 20 years that can’t be controlled by the antibiotics doctors have at their disposal.
It could be sea sponges to the rescue, say a team of scientists, including some from Florida Atlantic University.
In a study published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology in April, researchers identified several chemical compounds produced by microbes that live in deep-sea sponges. These secretions show promise in defeating antibiotic-resistant infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and colostridium difficile (C.diff), which menace patients in hospitals and long-term nursing facilities, killing millions of people every year.