Today's News: September 17, 2018

World News

Serial numbers of missile that downed MH17 show it was produced in 1986, owned by Ukraine – Russia
RT – The serial numbers found on debris of the Buk missile which downed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine show it was produced in 1986, the Russian military said. The projectile was owned by Ukraine, they added.

Mexico finds 124 Central American migrants aboard trucks
Fox – Mexican immigration agents say they have found 124 Central American migrants aboard three trucks who said they were prevented from eating or drinking for several days.
The National Immigration Institute said Monday the trucks were detected after they sped through a highway checkpoint in the southern state of Oaxaca.

LATIN AMERICAN RIGHTS GROUP ALLEGES COVER-UP OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT DEATH, ADMITS NO PROOF
The Daily Sheeple – A Latin American civil rights organization claimed that guards in a Texas federal detention center beat a group of illegal immigrant inmates so severely that one inmate died, but prison accounts dispute the allegation and the organization is walking back its claim.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) held a press conference on Sept. 6 accusing a handful of corrections officers of brutally beating three Hispanic inmates at Big Spring’s Flightline Correctional Facility after the sister of Jose David Garache-Munoz, one of the aforementioned inmates, contacted LULAC with the claim.
“One [inmate] has died while in custody in ‘the Hole’ as a result of the terrible beat down,” LULAC’s civil rights chair, Agustin Pinedo, said in a press release. But Pinedo told The Daily Caller News Foundation that LULAC has not been able to substantiate the death.
LULAC President Domingo Garcia told TheDCNF that they have not been able to confirm the death but said that multiple prisoners believe the inmate in question is dead because “he’s missing.” Garcia explained that the organization received their information from various inmates, who have corroborated Garache-Munoz’s account.

Brexit countdown: IMF chief gives no-deal warning
Al Jazeera – The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that a “no deal” exit from the European Union will come at a substantial economic cost to the UK.
Christine Lagarde says the UK’s growth rate will be less than half the global average, even if an agreement for a smooth Brexit transition is reached.
The economic situation in the event of a “no deal” exit? Lagarde called the consequences “dire” should there be a disorderly withdrawal from the EU.

US cuts aid to ‘Palestine-Israel’ conflict resolution programmes
Al Jazeera – The US has cut additional aid to the Palestinians for programmes supporting conflict resolution with Israelis, adding to more than $500m in other cuts.
The latest cuts come from $10m in programmes on reconciliation involving Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, as well as Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The portion of the money involving Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip was being redirected to programmes between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, a US embassy official said on Sunday.
It was not clear how much of the $10m was being redirected.
US officials also could not confirm whether the latest cut meant all non-military related aid to the Palestinians had now been eliminated.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Can you pass the test on National Constitution and Citizenship Day?
Today is a day to think about the United States because it’s National Constitution and Citizenship Day. Sept. 17 commemorates the adoption of Constitution of the United States and the people who are citizens of the country. On this day in 1787 the the members of the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution. The 14th Amendment of that Constitution defines a citizen as “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Learn more about the nation’s top document and how citizenship is observed here.
You can also take the practice civics test on the Unites States Citizenship and Immigration Services website to see how well you do.

Kavanaugh accuser comes forward as Democrats seek to block SCOTUS nomination
RT – A woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault has revealed her name and said she is willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as Democrats fight to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
The accuser, Christine Blassey Ford, is “willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth,” her attorney Debra Katz told NBC on Monday.
Ford claims that Kavanaugh forced himself on her at a high school party in the 1980s, pinning her to a bed and attempting to undress her. She said that Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth when she screamed, and only stopped when another teenager broke up the encounter.

Florida Appeals Court Opinion Upholds Fourth Amendment
The New American – In a rare victory for the Constitution, a Florida Court of Appeals upheld the order of a lower court suppressing evidence obtained by the use of a Stingray device, in violation of the defendant’s right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure.
The State charged the Defendant and two co-defendants with first-degree murder with a firearm while wearing a mask and six counts of robbery with a firearm while wearing a mask, arising from the robbery of a Boca Raton restaurant.
As part of its investigation, the State sought an order requiring the Defendant’s cell phone service provider to disclose real-time CSLI for what it believed was the Defendant’s cell phone number. A judge signed the “CSLI Order,” which required the service provider to disclose “all cell-site activations and sectors for all incoming and outgoing calls/communications … call detail location records, ‘angle from the tower’ data, including contemporaneous (real-time) with these communications, and historical calls/communications detail records.”
The law-enforcement agency carrying out the investigation admitted to the court that the cellphone company could only give “tower information,” that is to say, the cellphone company couldn’t provide precise GPS location of the phone, it could only provide a triangulation of the location based on the distance from cellphone towers.
That wasn’t enough for the police, so they deployed a Stingray device to give them the exact location of the phone. This step was taken without a warrant, an act which was an unmistakable violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Supreme Court to Hear Indiana Civil Asset Forfeiture Case
The New American – As is the case with the law of many states in the union, Indiana authorities may seize a suspect’s property, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the case against the accused.
Within a couple of months, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the arguments in a case filed by a man whose property was seized and life was shattered by Indiana law enforcement’s use of civil asset forfeiture against him.

DeVos Signs on to Globalist UN Education Agenda for U.S.
Freedom Project Media – U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signed on to a radical global “declaration” that calls for, among other absurdities, brainwashing children to believe in the United Nations-backed ideology of total government known as “ ‘sustainable development.” In fact, the pseudo-treaty inked by Trump’s education chief suggests that the purpose of schooling is to indoctrinate children with the right “values” and teach them to be obedient worker drones.
Under the un-American vision agreed to last week in Argentina, the governments purported to commit their nations to globalized brainwashing under the guise of “education.” To be clear, this is a dangerous policy document that, if implemented, will contribute to finalizing the destruction of traditional education in America and replacing it with a total indoctrination program aligned with the systems of some of the world’s most murderous autocracies. Americans should be outraged.
The declaration, produced at the first ever “Education Working Group” of the Group of 20 (G20) network of governments and dictatorships, was titled “‘Building consensus for fair and sustainable development.” How free nations can build “consensus” on “education” with murderous Islamist and Communist regimes that indoctrinate all children under their rule with evil ideologies of oppression was not made clear.

Catholic dioceses sued over disclosure of abuse allegations
Fox – Parents of children in the Roman Catholic Church and survivors of sexual abuse by clergy are suing Pennsylvania’s eight dioceses and their bishops to compel them to release information about allegations.

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fails to Explain How She’ll Pay for the $40 Trillion in “Free” Benefits

Edward Griffin – Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a socialist who holds a degree in economics, failed to explain how “Medicare for all” would ultimately save Americans money as she claims. Studies have shown the programs will cost $40 trillion over the next decade. Other “free” benefits that she supports include $5.4 trillion on guarantee on jobs, $1.4 trillion on student loans, and $1.3 trillion on free college, paid family leave and Social Security expansion. Leftist CNN host Jake Tapper was stymied by her explanation and closed the issue by saying he will have her back to discuss how the programs will be financed.

Manafort forfeits luxury homes under plea deal
AP – Paul Manafort’s guilty plea will cost him more than time behind bars.
His estate in the Hamptons won’t be waiting when the former Trump campaign chairman gets out. His Brooklyn brownstone will be gone, too, and his condo in Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Manafort, a high-rolling political consultant brought low, also agreed to forfeit big bank accounts, life insurance and more as part of his plea deal on Friday with special counsel Robert Mueller.
The forfeiture agreement is final and cannot be revoked, court documents say.

Presidential Alerts: FEMA to test emergency alert system next week
Off Grid Survival – On Thursday, September 20, the federal government will be conducting a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The federal alert system, which was put in place during the Obama administration, will conduct the first-ever nationwide test of the Presidential alert feature, which was designed to alert the country during times of extreme national emergencies.
The WEA presidential alert test message will be sent to cell phones that are connected to wireless providers participating in WEA, which includes Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and more than 100 smaller carriers.

Energy & Environment

Florence floodwaters limit access to nuclear power plant, ‘unusual event’ declared
Fox – A nuclear power plant just outside of Wilmington, North Carolina declared an “unusual event” Monday after rising floodwaters and storm damage caused limited access to the facility, officials said.
Duke Energy’s Brunswick Nuclear Plant – located about 30 miles south of Wilmington – declared the state of emergency, the lowest required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after roads surrounding the 1,200-acre complex were impacted by flooding and downed trees.
“None of the roads are passable,” NRC spokesman Joey Ledford told the News & Observer. “The plant is safe. The reactors are in hot stand-by mode 3 shutdown.”

Colorado River headed for water shortage
The Hill – A recent report from the Bureau of Reclamation projects a 57 percent chance of shortages on the Colorado River in 2020 and beyond, and indicates that water levels on Lake Powell, one of the river’s two main reservoirs, could drop very far and very fast — to the point where people in California, Arizona, or Nevada could have their supplies cut off without a say.
The impacts of these conditions are already being felt on the ground: Colorado closed the Yampa River to fishing and boating in July, and then, for the first time ever, also cut water to some users in September.
In Arizona, managers at the Ironwood Forest National Monument have been using helicopters to drop water for bighorn sheep.

Science & Technology

Senior Google Scientist Resigns over Chinese ‘Dragonfly’ Search Engine Censorship and Data Collection

Edward Griffin – Jack Poulson, a senior Google research scientist, quit the company in protest over its plan to censor its search engine in China. The search system, code-named Dragonfly, was designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. Poulson also had concerns over the accessibility customer data to Chinese agencies that target political activists and journalists. He is surprised that more of the company’s employees have not quit over Dragonfly.

‘Nuclear pasta’ could be strongest material in the universe – study
RT – Theoretical physics has generated many theories over the past century but new research into so-called ‘nuclear pasta’ – highly dense atomic material found in dead stars – shows that science is quickly ‘spirali’ out of control.
Researchers at the Indiana University Bloomington who study incredibly dense objects like neutron stars, formed when dying stars explode, are now theorizing that the gravitational force beneath the outer ‘crust’ of these celestial objects is so immense that it creates atomic structures that can only be described as “nuclear pasta.”
According to their research, just one kilometer below the crust of a neutron star, a dense mixture of neutrons and protons forms structures akin to pasta in all sorts of (theoretical) shapes and sizes, including but not limited to: blobs, tubes and sheets, like their real-world comparators gnocchi, spaghetti and lasagna respectively.
In addition, the scientists theorize that this ‘nuclear pasta’ is roughly 100 trillion times the density of water and would require roughly 10 billion times the force required to break steel just to make an ‘al dente’ in it.

Navy to flight test first-of-its-kind carrier-launched drone in 2021
Fox – The Navy will launch formal flight testing in 2021 for a new, first-of-its kind carrier-launched drone engineered to double the attack range of F-18 fighters, F-35Cs and other carrier aircraft.
The emerging Navy MQ-25 Stingray program, to enter service in the mid-2020s, will bring a new generation of technology by engineering a new unmanned re-fueler for the carrier air wing.

Weeklong evacuation of solar observatory still mystery
Nzherald.co.nz – At a small solar observatory tucked away in the woods of a national forest in Sacramento, US, scientists and other personnel were commanded last week to leave at once. A week later, the facility remains vacant, and no one is willing to say why.
The mysterious and lengthy evacuation, in a state known for secretive military testing and a suspected UFO crash, has spawned a wealth of speculation.
Did the researchers spot something extraterrestrial? Was the solar telescope hacked by a foreign power and deployed to spy on, say, the state’s missile testing range? Or is there an innocuous explanation, suppressed only because of corporate and government resistance to transparency?

Health

Baby-aspirin risks overwhelm benefits in healthy elderly
Fox – In healthy elderly people who never had a heart attack, the widespread practice of taking a baby aspirin every day may do more harm than good, according to a U.S.-Australian study of more than 19,000 volunteers.
The trial has “provided convincing evidence that aspirin is ineffective in preserving good health in elderly people without a medical (reason) to be using it,” chief author Dr. John J. McNeil of Monash University in Melbourne told Reuters Health in an email.

BANNED DRUGS FOUND IN YOUR MEAT
The Daily Sheeple – Factory farmed chicken has been identified as the food responsible for the greatest number of foodborne illnesses, thanks to the presence of pathogenic bacteria, many of which are resistant to antibiotics. Now, testing reveals chicken and other meats may also contain drugs that are banned for use in food animals.
As reported by Consumer Reports,1 drugs such as ketamine, phenylbutazone and chloramphenicol are all found in the U.S. meat supply.

More toxic to humans than high fructose corn syrup, this dirty little secret ingredient is COMMON in U.S. foods (and beverages)
NaturalNews – Ever wonder why one third of all Americans get cancer at some point in their lifetime, even though hardly anyone got it a century ago? How about leukemia, do you think it’s hereditary? You would be dead wrong. A common ingredient in soft drinks and most jarred peppers and pickles causes leukemia, but no medical doctor in America has been authorized to talk about it, and most of them have no clue anyhow.
What’s the poison? It’s called sodium benzoate, and you’ll find it in popular paint stripper products, permanent spot removers, rubber cements, and lots of U.S. food products all approved by the FDA for human consumption.

Milk thistle shows promise in treating liver cancer
NaturalNews – Milk thistle has been used in herbal medicine for centuries. Historically, the prickly, purple plant has been used to promote liver health and is highly regarded for its antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. New studies have shown that the protective benefits of milk thistle are far greater than conventional scientists could have ever imagined. While modern medicine tends to eschew the cures of yore, researchers from the University of California, Irvine have shown that milk thistle is extremely effective against liver cancer.