Enough is Enough, Mark Zuckerberg! Conservatives Urge Fairer Social Media Policies Written By Craig Bannister Originally published on CNSNews.com Social media censorship and online restriction of conservatives and their organizations have reached a crisis level, conservative leaders said Tuesday. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hearings on Capitol Hill only served to draw attention to how widespread […]
FILE PHOTO: Dec 30, 2018; Denver, CO, USA; Los Angeles Chargers outside linebacker Kyle Emanuel (51) warms up before the game against the Denver Broncos at Broncos Stadium at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
April 4, 2019
Free agent linebacker Kyle Emanuel announced his retirement from the NFL on Thursday.
Selected by the San Diego Chargers in the fifth round of the 2015 NFL draft, Emanuel spent four years with the franchise. He has played in 63 games for the franchise. A Nebraska native, he played collegiately at FCS powerhouse North Dakota State.
He played out his four-year, $2.5 million rookie contract and had visited the Detroit Lions and had drawn other interest from other teams, according to multiple reports.
In his Twitter post on Thursday, the 27-year-old Emanuel said injuries have played a part in his retirement.
“There is no one specific reason why I came to this decision, but as I contemplated it this offseason, something told me it was time to walk away,” he wrote. “Although it wasn’t the sole reason, the injuries have started to pile up and I had to take my long-term health into consideration. I have no idea what will come next which is scary and exciting at the same time but I can’t wait to get started on whatever it is.”
Emanuel ends his career with 133 tackles (11 for loss), 10 quarterback hits, four sacks and two interceptions.
Swedish-Norwegian “Islamophobia” expert turned Islamic State jihadist Michael Skråmos has been arrested by Kurdish forces in Syria, with sources claiming Norway wants to prosecute the extremist.
The 33-year-old, born in Sweden to Norwegian parents, was captured this week in the village of Baghouz in one of the very few remaining areas under any form of Islamic State control, Swedish newspaper Expressenreports.
Skråmo had been one of the hundreds of Islamic State terrorists still fighting Kurdish forces and attempting to defend the village. He was also not the only foreign fighter, with most of the last surviving holdouts being foreigners.
Though the Swedish citizen had told relatives that he would rather die than surrender, he was allegedly captured by the Kurds after surrendering to them following the previous capture of his seven children.
Swedish YPG soldier Jesper Söder described the capture of the infamous jihadist, saying, “He was arrested with a cluster of people. I think he was found in a cluster of people in a tunnel where he had dug himself in.”
Söder added that around 50 Islamic State members were arrested at once, including women and children.
A Memorial High School baseball player was allegedly bound, gagged and dragged on a field in a hazing incident. (Facebook )
A New Jersey high school baseball player was bound, gagged and dragged around a field by other players in a hazing incident, local officials said Wednesday.
West New York, N.J., Mayor Felix Roque told NJ.com a school district employee informed him about the alleged incident involving Memorial High School student-athletes. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured or if authorities were looking into the alleged hazing.
“It’s abhorrent to see this type of behavior in our school system,” said Roque. He added that he did not know which date the alleged incident occurred or where, but said it was recorded and posted to social media.
In a Tuesday statement, West New York Board of Education Superintendent Clara Brito Herrera said a “bully/hazing” incident involving a few student-athletes occurred, but gave no specifics. She said the district is "committed to conducting a thorough investigation and pursuing disciplinary/corrective action, if warranted” but declined to discuss the matter during the board's Wednesday meeting.
John Fraraccio, the school’s athletic director referred questions from the news site to Herrera. The school’s Wednesday varsity baseball game was postponed until Thursday because of logistical issues, an official said.
Security personnel stand guard outside of the hijacked aircraft of the Biman Bangladesh Airlines in the Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittogong, Bangladesh February 24, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer
February 26, 2019
By Serajul Quadir and Ruma Paul
DHAKA (Reuters) – A Bangladeshi passenger on a Dubai-bound flight who threatened to blow up the plane and tried to force his way into the cockpit was carrying a toy gun and no explosives, police said on Monday.
Police are investigating how the man had been able to board the Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight in Dhaka on Sunday in the first place.
The Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing in the southern port of Chittagong where commandos stormed the plane and shot the would-be hijacker, officials said. All 148 passengers and crew safely disembarked, police said.
The hijacker died later of his injuries.
“The pistol with the suspect was a toy pistol and he had no bomb attached to his body,” said Kusum Dewan, additional commissioner of Chittagong police.
“He appeared to be mentally imbalanced. We heard he had a personal issue with his wife and demanded to speak to the prime minister. But we are still investigating. We don’t want to come to any conclusions right now.”
Air Vice Marshal Nayeem Hasan, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, said it was a mystery how the man, believed to be in his 20s, had managed to board the plane.
“It was the responsibility of the Civil Aviation Authority to search each passenger before boarding and it was done for this aircraft also, but it is a big question to us that how he boarded with a pistol,” he told Reuters.
“Now we are focusing on two issues – his background and identity and the security aspect that how he boarded with a pistol.”
Biman Bangladesh, launched in 1972, flies to 16 countries.
(Wriiting by Zeba Siddiqui; Editing by Nick Macfie)
FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019 file photo, Pakistan's Finance Minister Asad Umar attend a meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan. Pakistan's finance minister says he will step down amid a wave of criticism over the government's handling of a financial crisis that has sent prices soaring. Umar tweeted Thursday, April 18, 2019 that Prime Minister Imran Khan offered him the energy portfolio in the Cabinet but he refused. He defended Khan's leadership, calling him the "best hope" for Pakistan.(AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's finance minister said Thursday he will step down amid a wave of criticism over the government's handling of a financial crisis that has sent prices soaring.
Asad Umar tweeted that Prime Minister Imran Khan offered him the energy portfolio in the Cabinet but he refused. He defended Khan's leadership, calling him the "best hope" for Pakistan.
Umar's resignation came days after he returned from talks in Washington with the International Monetary Fund. Pakistan is seeking an $8 billion bailout package, but the United States, which exerts major influence over the fund, has said it should not finance the billions of dollars in loans Pakistan has taken from China as part of Beijing's "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative.
PYONGYANG, North Korea – North Korean factories are filling city store shelves with ever better and fancier snack foods and sugary drinks, while government officials and international aid organizations warn the nation could be on the verge of a major food crisis.
North Korea's U.N. ambassador, Kim Song, issued an unusual appeal for "urgent" food assistance last month. He cited record-high temperatures, drought and flooding that cut the harvest this year by more than 10 percent.
The government says it's stepping up imports and working to increase the output of early and basic crops such as wheat and barley.
Hazel Smith, a North Korea expert at the University of London, says supplies from all sources might only stretch to feed about three-quarters of the population at the most basic survival level this year.
A Florida measure that would ban sanctuary cities is set for a vote Friday in the state’s Senate after clearing its first hurdle earlier this week.
The bill would effectively make it against the law for Florida’s police departments to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
“The Governor may initiate judicial proceedings in the name of the state against such officers to enforce compliance,” a draft version of the Senate bill reads.
A House version of the bill, which passed by a 69-47 vote Wednesday, adds that non-complying officials could be suspended or removed from office and face fines of up to $5,000 per day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign off on the measure, although it’s not clear which version.
Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), during a press conference at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, speaks out against bills in the House and Senate that would ban sanctuary cities in the state. (AP)
Florida is home to 775,000 illegal immigrants out of 10.7 million present in the United States, ranking the state third among all states.
Nine states — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas — already have enacted state laws requiring law enforcement to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Florida doesn’t have sanctuary cities like the ones in California and other states. But Republican lawmakers say a handful of their municipalities — including Orlando and West Palm Beach – are acting as “pseudo-sanctuary” cities, because they prevent law enforcement officials from asking about immigration status when they make arrests.
“There are still people here in the state of Florida, police chiefs that are just refusing to contact ICE, refusing to detain somebody that they know is here illegally,” Florida Republican Rep. Blaise Ingoglia said earlier this month. “So while the actual county municipality doesn’t have an actual adopted policy, they still have people in power within their sheriff’s department or police department that refuse to do it anyway.”
Florida’s Democratic Party has blasted the anti-Sanctuary measures, while the Miami-Dade Police Department says it should be up to federal authorities to handle immigration-related matters.
“House Republicans today sold out their communities to Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis by passing this xenophobic and discriminatory bill,” the state’s Democratic Party said Wednesday after the House passed their version of the bill. “It’s abhorrent that Republican members who represent immigrant communities are now turning their backs on their constituents and jeopardizing their safety.
“Florida has long stood as a beacon for immigrant communities — and today Republicans did the best they could to destroy that reputation,” they added.
Fox News’ Elina Shirazi contributed to this report.
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain’s far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville, Spain April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By John Stonestreet and Belén Carreño
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Vox party, aligned to a broader far-right movement emerging across Europe, has become the focus of speculation about last minute shifts in voting intentions since official polling for Sunday’s national election ended four days ago.
No single party is anywhere near securing a majority, and chances of a deadlocked parliament and a second election are high.
Leaders of the five parties vying for a role in government get final chances to pitch for power at rallies on Friday evening, before a campaign characterized by appeals to voters’ hearts rather than wallets ends at midnight.
By tradition, the final day before a Spanish election is politics-free.
Two main prizes are still up for grabs in the home straight. One concerns which of the two rival left and right multi-party blocs gets more votes.
The other is whether Vox could challenge the mainstream conservative PP for leadership of the latter bloc, which media outlets with access to unofficial soundings taken since Monday suggest could be starting to happen.
The right’s loose three-party alliance is led by the PP, the traditional conservative party that has alternated in office with outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
The PP stands at around 20 percent, with center-right Ciudadanos near 14 percent and Vox around 11 percent, according to a final poll of polls in daily El Pais published on Monday.
Since then, however, interest in Vox – which will become the first far-right party to sit in parliament since 1982 – has snowballed.
It was founded in 2013, part of a broader anti-establishment, far-right movement that has also spread across – among others – Italy, France and Germany.
While it is careful to distance itself from the ideology of late dictator Francisco Franco, Vox’s signature policies include repealing laws banning Franco-era symbols and on gender-based violence, and shifting power away from Spain’s regional governments.
TRENDING
According to a Google trends graphic, Vox has generated more than three times more search inquiries than any other Spanish political party in the past week.
Reasons could include a groundswell of vocal activist support at Vox rallies in Madrid and Valencia, and its exclusion from two televised debates between the main party leaders, on the grounds of it having no deputies yet in parliament.
Conservative daily La Vanguardia called its enforced absence from Monday’s and Tuesday’s debates “a gift from heaven”, while left-wing Eldiario.es suggested the PP was haemorrhaging votes to Vox in rural areas.
Ignacio Jurado, politics lecturer at the University of York, agreed the main source of additional Vox votes would be disaffected PP supporters, and called the debate ban – whose impact he said was unclear – wrong.
“This is a party polling over 10 percent and there are people interested in what it says. So we lose more than we win in not having them (in the debates),” he said
For Jose Fernandez-Albertos, political scientist at Spanish National Research Council CSIC, Vox is enjoying the novelty effect that propelled then new, left-wing arrival Podemos to 20 percent of the vote in 2015.
“While it’s unclear how to interpret the (Google) data, what we do know is that it’s better to be popular and to be a newcomer, and that Vox will benefit in some form,” he said.
For now, the chances of Vox taking a major role in government remain slim, however.
The El Pais survey put the Socialists on around 30 percent, making them the frontrunners and likely to form a leftist bloc with Podemos, back down at around 14 percent.
The unofficial soundings suggest little change in the two parties’ combined vote, or the total vote of the rightist bloc.
That makes it unlikely that either bloc will win a majority on Sunday, triggering horse-trading with smaller parties favoring Catalan independence – the single most polarizing issues during campaigning – that could easily collapse into fresh elections.
(Election graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ENugtw)
(Reporting by John Stonestreet and Belen Carreno, Editing by William Maclean)
LANCASTER, Pa. – The Amish population in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County is continuing to grow each year, despite the encroachment of urban sprawl on their communities.
The U.S. Census Bureau says the county added about 2,500 people in 2018. LNP reports that about 1,000 of them were Amish.
Elizabethtown College researchers say Lancaster County’s Amish population reached 33,143 in 2018, up 3.2% from the previous year.
The Amish accounted for about 41% of the county’s overall population growth last year.
Some experts are concerned that a planned 75-acre (30-hectare) housing and commercial project will make it more difficult for the county to accommodate the Amish.
Donald Kraybill, an authority on Amish culture, told Manheim Township commissioners this week that some in the community are worried about the development and the increased traffic it would bring.
Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera has warned that if Democratic 2020 presidential candidates don’t take the crisis at the border seriously, they’ll do so at their own risk.
Speaking with “Fox & Friends” hosts on Friday morning, Rivera discussed the influx of candidates entering the race, including former Vice President Joe Biden, and gave an update on the newest developments at the border.
“If [Democrats] don’t take it seriously they ignore it at their peril,” Rivera said.
He went on to discuss the fact that Mexico is experiencing the same problems dealing with volumes of people at the border as the United States is. Processing facilities, as many have argued, are understaffed and underresourced, resulting in conditions that have been controversial.
“It is very, very difficult when hundreds and hundreds become thousands and thousands ultimately become tens of it is very difficult to have an orderly system,” he said.
Rivera asserted his opinion that the United States could lessen the influx of migrants coming into the country by investing in the development of Central American countries, where many are fleeing from violence and economic instability.
“I believe, as I have said before on this program, that we have to stop the source of the migrant explosion, by a comprehensive system of political and economic reform in Central America where people have the incentive to stay home,” Rivera said.
“I think we have help Mexico with its infrastructure. Mexico has a moral burden, as the president made very clear, not to let unchecked herds of desperate people flow through 2,000 miles of Mexican territory to get our southern border.”
Rivera also brought up President Trump’s controversial comments about Mexican immigrants during his campaign in 2016.
The Fox News correspondent said that having been so excited about Trump’s campaign, the comments made him feel “deflated” as a Hispanic American.
However, as the crisis at the border has accelerated over the last few years, Rivera argued that ultimately, the president’s comments weren’t incorrect.
“He is now in a position where he can justly say I was right, that the that the anarchy at the border doesn’t serve anybody,” Rivera said. “Maybe he said it in a language I felt was a little rough and insensitive, but there is no doubt.”
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
April 26, 2019
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and told the cartel to lower oil prices.
“Gasoline prices are coming down. I called up OPEC, I said you’ve got to bring them down. You’ve got to bring them down,” Trump told reporters.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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