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National Debt Overwhelming Taxpayers

Yesterday was tax day.

We’d like to think the money we hand over to the IRS is paying for stuff – things like roads, education and national defense. But an increasing number of tax dollars are simply going to pay interest on the national debt. According to Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya MacGuineas, the average taxpayer forked over more than $2,000 this year just to cover their share of the interest on the national debt.

In other words, we’re not paying for stuff today. We’re paying for the spending of the past.

In an op-ed published by The Hill, MacGuineas and former Pensylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said interest payments on the debt rank as the fastest growing part of the federal budget. It will be bigger than Medicaid next year and larger than the military budget by 2025.

Even so, borrowing and spending show no signs of slowing. The federal government set an all-time record monthly deficit of $234 billion in February. The net interest payment that month alone was $25 billion. The annual interest expense for the federal government is approaching $500 billion. And it will continue to accelerate as each month’s deficit adds to a national debt already topping $22 trillion.

Despite the ever upward spiraling debt, there seems to be no urgency to address this issue in Washington D.C. The Hill article lists a litany of excuses used to sweep the problem under the rug.

  • Tax cuts pay for themselves (they don’t)
  • “My priority” is too important to worry about paying for it.
  • Don’t worry we can just print more money
  • The debt isn’t really important and we can deal with it down the road.

Wrap your head around this. At the current rate, within 50 years, the national debt will be twice as large as the entire US economy. This is using conservative numbers and assumes Congress doesn’t do anything to make the situation worse – probably not a safe assumption.

These spiraling interest payments are one of the reasons the Federal Reserve can’t let interest rates rise. Every uptick in the interest rate increases the government’s interest payment. At the current trajectory, the cost of paying the annual interest on the US debt will equal the annual cost of Social Security within 30 years.

Now, imagine where we’d be if we were actually in a “normal” interest rate environment. If the interest rate on Treasury debt stood at 6.2% – as it did in 2000 – the annual interest payment on the current debt would nearly triple to $1.3 trillion.

This is a debt-spiral.


Mike Adams exposes the agenda of the private Fed as a war against the prosperity of Americans that simply want to make America great.

John Rubino of DollarCollapse.com made an important observation about the trajectory of interest payments. They were held artificially low through the massive Obama spending spree thanks to the Fed’s low interest rate policy.

“The decline in interest expense between 2007 and 2014 – while we were running trillion-dollar deficits – was due to the Fed lowering interest rates to levels not seen since the Great Depression. This seemingly free lunch led many in the political/Keynesian class to conclude that they’d discovered a perpetual motion machine: simply cut interest rates every year and borrowing is essentially free … The recent 25% spike in interest expense in just three years exceeds the percentage increase in government debt because interest rates rose concurrently. So the US is now being hit with a double-whammy of debt that’s both rising and becoming more costly. Now the real trouble begins. As the government’s short-term debt is refinanced at ever-higher interest rates, interest expense will rise even more steeply. Within three years at the current rate of borrowing, US federal debt will be $25 trillion. An average interest rate of 4% – below the historical norm and easily within reach if current trends continue – will produce an annual interest expense of $1 trillion. Interest will be the government’s largest single budget item, raising the deficit and adding to future debt increases. The perpetual motion machine will have shifted into reverse.”

When you get into a debt-spiral, rising interest expense begets higher deficits begets rising interest expense. As Rubino points out, once you’re in the spiral, there really isn’t a way out – only a choice of crises. Push rates down and risk a currency collapse or allow rates to continue rising and burst the bubble economy.


Big Tech is now bragging about the amount of control they will have over public discourse online. Alex explains that globalists have been planning to have this type of control for decades.

Source: InfoWars

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German economic advisors slash 2019 growth forecast to 0.8 percent

FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of containers at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg
FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of containers at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg, Germany August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

March 19, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – A panel of advisers to the German government slashed its growth forecast for this year to 0.8 percent and warned risks related to Britain’s departure from the European Union, trade disputes and a sharper than expected slowdown in China remained high.

The group that advises the German government on economic policy had in November forecast that Europe’s largest economy would expand by 1.5 percent this year.

The panel said on Tuesday economic growth had slowed significantly, partly due to problems in the chemical and auto sectors and warned that a spiral of protectionist measures had the potential to push the economy into recession.

But Christoph Schmidt, one of the advisers, said: “The German economic boom is over but a recession is not currently expected due to the robust domestic economy.”

The group predicted the economy would grow by 1.7 percent in 2020.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Madeline Chambers)

Source: OANN

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Daimler, BMW to invest more than 1 billion euro in mobility services

Shareholders look at Mercendes-Benz cars during Daimler annual shareholder meeting in Berlin
FILE PHOTO: Shareholders look at Mercendes-Benz cars during the Daimler annual shareholder meeting in Berlin April 10, 2013. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

February 22, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – German carmakers Daimler and BMW deepened their cooperation on Friday by unveiling a combined ride-hailing, parking and electric car charging business to counter emerging rivals like Uber from the United States.

The luxury car manufacturers said they have earmarked more than 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) to expand their mobility services business as carmakers move beyond manufacturing and selling cars, toward a pay-per-minute system based on vehicle usage.

Daimler’s Car2Go car-sharing business will be combined with BMW’s DriveNow, ParkNow and ChargeNow businesses, with both carmakers holding 50 percent stake in the venture.

(Reporting by Irene Presinger; Writing by Edward Taylor; Editing by Ludwig Burger)

Source: OANN

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Sri Lanka bombings on Easter Sunday claim lives of 3 of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s children

Three of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s four children were among the nearly 300 people killed on Easter Sunday when Islamic suicide bombers attacked hotels and churches in Sri Lanka, a spokesperson for Povlsen's company confirmed.

Holch Povlsen, his wife Anne Holch Povlsen and the couple's four children were in Colombo during the Easter holiday when the suicide bombing occurred. They were staying at the Shangri-La hotel, which was targeted by two suicide bombers Sunday, Forbes reported.

"Unfortunately, we can confirm the reports," Bestseller spokesperson Jesper Stubkier told Forbes. "We ask you to respect the privacy of the family and we, therefore, have no further comments."

Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife Anne Holch Povlsen's three children were among the hundreds killed in the Sri Lanka attacks.

Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife Anne Holch Povlsen's three children were among the hundreds killed in the Sri Lanka attacks. (Getty Images)

The spokesman did not provide further information on where the Holch Povlsen family was when the attacks occurred. The identities of the children were not released.

SRI LANKA ON EDGE AFTER LOCAL ISLAMIC MILITANT GROUP BLAMED FOR EASTER SUNDAY ATTACKS: REPORT

An Instagram account identified as belonging to one of Holch Povlsen’s children featured a post from several days ago showing her and two of her siblings. The Instagram post has since been flooded with condolences for the family, though it's unclear if those pictured were the children who died.

The 46-year-old business tycoon is the richest person in Denmark with a net worth of $7.9 billion. He is the biggest shareholder of British online retailer Asos and the largest landowner in Scotland. Holch Povlsen also holds significant stakes in Zalando and Klarna.

Bestseller CEO Anders Holch Povlsen's three of four children were killed.

Bestseller CEO Anders Holch Povlsen's three of four children were killed. (Getty Images)

Sunday’s coordinated bombings, which ripped through churches and luxury hotels, were carried out by seven suicide bombers from a militant group believed to be National Thowfeek Jamaath, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said.

SRI LANKA CHURCH, HOTEL MASSACRE VICTIMS INCLUDE TV CHEF, MOTHER AND SON, AMERICANS

Senaratne said the international intelligence agencies warned of attacks several times since the start of April, but Sri Lankan officials still failed to stop the deadly bombings.

A Sri Lankan Police officer inspects a blast spot at the Shangri-la hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

A Sri Lankan Police officer inspects a blast spot at the Shangri-la hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (AP)

Among those killed was Dieter Kowalski, a 40-year-old man from Denver, Colo., who landed in the country on Sunday, his employer confirmed to FOX31.

“We mourn Dieter deeply today. We pray for his soul, and for his family and friends,” the email from Pearson’s CEO John Fallon said. “We pray, too, for our colleagues in Sri Lanka, and Denver, and Boston, and in Pearson offices around the world.”

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The Daily Telegraph reported five British nationals are among the dead, including Shantha Mayadunne, a TV chef, and her daughter, Nisanga.

Shantha Mayadunne's website identified her as the first chef to host a live cooking show in Sri Lanka. She also had published multiple books.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source: Fox News World

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Merkel voices concern about situation in Libya, Sudan

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expressing concern about the human rights situation in Libya and Sudan while calling for an improved approach to the factors that force people to migrate.

Merkel said before a meeting Monday with the head of the U.N. refugee agency that "the challenges (of migration) continue to be gigantic."

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said the escalation of fighting in Libya made it difficult to work in the refugee camps there. He thanked Germany for its support of migrants in Libya and elsewhere.

Separately, Merkel talked to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on the phone about the political instability in Libya and Sudan. She says Germany supports the Sudanese opposition's demand for the military government to hand power over to a civilian administration.

Source: Fox News World

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5 inmates escape N. Carolina jail, 2 taken into custody

Two of the five inmates who escaped from the Nash County Detention center in North Carolina have been taken into custody.

WRAL-TV reports that Sheriff Keith Stone says the inmates forced through a whole in a fence in the exercise yard at 3:30 p.m. on Monday and escaped. He said it was possible the inmates knew they were in a camera's blind spot.

The inmates are identified as 28-year-old David Marshal Viverette, 30-year-old David Ruffin Jr., 23-year-old Keonte Daemoan Murphy, 25-year-old Raheem D-Carlos Horne and 22-year-old Laquaris Rashad Battle. It was not immediately clear which of the two had been captured.

Their charges range from possession of a stolen vehicle to assault by strangulation and drug possession.

Stone says the FBI and other area law enforcement departments are assisting in the search. He urged residents to lock their homes and cars while the hunt continues.

___

This story has been corrected to show the inmates escaped on Monday, not Tuesday.

Source: Fox News National

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Indiana ‘spring breakers’ fend off gunman and accomplice in alleged botched robbery attempt: report

Four Indiana pals on spring break in Florida were confronted by a gunman at a gas station early Sunday but managed to grab the gun and tackle the would-be robber to the ground, police say a surveillance video shows.

The alleged robbery attempt took place around 3:45 a.m. in Oakland Park, which is about 4 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, WPLG reported.

The four friends were getting gas when a gunman got out of a car, approached them and demanded money, Broward Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Gina Carter said.

ALABAMA FAMILY DOLLAR STORE CLERK FIGHTS OFF SWORD-WIELDING ROBBERS WITH GUN

The friends jumped into action, with one wrestling the gun out of the would-be robber’s hand while the others tackled him to the ground, police said.

A scuffle ensued and a shirtless man ran up to push the friends off of the gunman, police said. The gunman and his shirtless accomplice then fled the scene.

Kevin Campbell, the gunman’s alleged accomplice on Sunday, faces several charges including robbery with a firearm and resisting an officer.

Kevin Campbell, the gunman’s alleged accomplice on Sunday, faces several charges including robbery with a firearm and resisting an officer.

The gunman’s accomplice, later identified by police as 33-year-old Kevin Campbell, was arrested shortly after the incident, WSVN 7News reported. Campbell faces multiple charges, including armed robbery and resisting another officer, the report said.

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Campbell faced a judge on Monday and is being held on a $10,000 bond. Authorities said the other suspect has not been arrested.

Source: Fox News National

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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