NORWAY - Norway's healthcare ministry on Friday proposed allowing people to legally change their gender without the need for any surgery, hormone treatment or sterilisation, a move hailed by Amnesty International. The ministry introduced a bill proposing that "people who want to change their legal gender are no longer required to undergo medical treatment." The bill is expected to pass with a broad majority in parliament. "Norway is in the forefront when it comes to LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] rights. But our current system for changing legal gender is unacceptable and has been unchanged for nearly 60 years. This proposal is in accordance with human rights," Healthcare Minister Bent Høie said in a statement.
USA - As if autonomous drones launching Hellfire missiles at targets acquired through the collection of metadata weren’t horrifying enough, the US military now has its own death rays. Since the days of Nikola Tesla, and his plans for a death ray, the up and coming military industrial complex has salivated over the idea of direct energy weapons.
AUSTRALIA - Australia has approved the license application from Big Pharma company PaxVax that will allow them to intentionally release a GMO vaccine consisting of live bacteria into Queensland, via chemtrails. The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) says that the vaccine qualifies as a limited and controlled release under section 50A of the Gene Technology Act 2000. PaxVax is seeking approval to conduct the clinical trial of a genetically modified live bacterial vaccine against cholera.
USA - The official number of illegal aliens in the state of California is nearly 3 million. We can estimate the number to be more than double this amount in reality. Over half of all drivers licenses issued in California were given to individuals who are here illegally and the state automatically registers those with a driver’s license to vote. In 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown (Democrat for California) signed a bill giving full voting rights to illegal aliens. This gives them the right to vote in all elections from a local level to national elections, including that of choosing who will become President. The biggest problem with this is it is against Federal law for non-citizens to vote in any national election. This in itself negates the votes made by illegal aliens in California and any other state which allows them to vote.
USA - There is important news from the United States today. Sheila Liaugminas reports that, “finally”, the United States Congress and the State Department have acknowledged that the violence directed against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities by ISIS is genocide.
USA - President Barack Obama will name the first woman to head a US combatant command, selecting Air Force General Lori Robinson as the next head of the military's Northern Command, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday. "General Robinson, it just so happens, would also be the first ever female combatant commander," Carter said, disclosing Obama's plans to nominate her. "That shows yet another thing - which is that we have, coming along now, a lot of female officers who are exceptionally strong. And Lori certainly fits into that category," Carter said at an event hosted by Politico.
USA - An emerald-green comet will brush the Earth Monday, followed one day later by a kissing cousin that will swerve closer to the planet than any other comet in nearly 250 years. The first and bigger of the two comets will be visible Monday to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere, as long as city lights are far away. Stargazers in the United States will probably need only binoculars to see the bigger comet in late March. Scientists, however, are bringing out the big guns. The Hubble Space Telescope, the powerful ground-based Gemini telescopes and others will be trained on the celestial visitors, which will provide an extraordinary close-up of objects usually glimpsed only at a distance.
GERMANY - The recent elections to parliaments of three lands in Germany were dubbed as the turning point in the political life of the country. German voters have expressed distrust in political old-timers - the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats - the CDU and the SPD. A young party of eurosceptics - Alternative for Germany (AfD) is coming to replace them. The party advocates Germany's friendship with Russia.
ITALY - Roberto Leoni, a barrel-chested prosciutto salesman in the wealthy northern Italian city of Parma, can trace his country’s growing disenchantment with the EU through a simple timeline.
USA - In a bid to raise cash, foreign central banks and government institutions sold $57.2 billion of US Treasury debt and other notes in January, according to figures released on Tuesday. That is up from $48 billion in December and the highest monthly tally on record going back to 1978.
USA - Lord Rothschild Letter to Investors (via RIT Capital): “In my half-yearly statement I sounded a note of caution, ending up by writing that ‘the climate is one where the wind may well not be behind us’; indeed we became increasingly concerned about global equity markets during the last quarter of 2015, reducing our exposure to equities as the economic outlook darkened and many companies reported disappointing earnings. Meanwhile central banks’ policy makers became more pessimistic in their economic forecasts for, despite unprecedented monetary stimulus, growth remained anaemic. Not surprisingly, market conditions have deteriorated further. So much so that the wind is certainly not behind us; indeed we may well be in the eye of a storm.”
RUSSIA - The meeting between the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and the head of the Roman Catholic Church received mixed reactions in the world. The meeting became a hope for some and a terrible omen signaling the collapse of religions for others. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Pravda.Ru sat down for an interview to discuss the significance of the meeting with Orthodox publicist Victor Saulkin, a member of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society.
USA - With little fanfare and almost no news media attention, some of the same radical groups involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally last week are plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month.
USA - I can’t believe this is the level of discourse happening on campuses. This debate about whether white people should be exterminated was held at Harvard University. The pro-genocide team, Damiyr Davis and Miguel Felician, is from the University of West Georgia. The topic of the debate supposed to be renewable energy — not race. The black debaters simply "chose" to point out their opponents’ skin color and begin advocating genocide. They expressly stated that these were their "sincere beliefs", not just an argument to win a debate.
USA - Exports fell precipitously during the last two recessions, and now it is happening again. So how in the world can anyone make the claim that the US economy is in good shape? On my website I have been repeatedly pointing out the parallels between the last two major economic downturns and the current crisis, and I am going to discuss another one today.