Water experts are trying to determine how "resilient" the state's water infrastructure is in keeping safe drinking water flowing through the taps. There are indications that the system is more fragile than once thought: After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, more than 200 public water systems shut down or warned customers to boil their tap water. Months later, 3,700 Texans still lacked access to safe drinking water. Before that storm, 30 towns in 2013 were within six months of running out of water as a drought continued to grip the state.

"The state is growing so fast that we're constantly playing catch-up when it comes to building resilient water supplies," said Robert Mace, executive director of The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. "The question is: When the bad times come will there be enough water for everybody?"

This isn’t the first time rats have infested a city building. Earlier this year, a city attorney contracted typhus at LA City Hall. The LA Police Protective League issued a statement Wednesday evening. It read in part, “Officers worry enough about being shot or injured policing the streets of Los Angeles. They shouldn’t also have to worry about being infected with diseases they can take home to their families simply by showing up to work.” The strong statement also called for the immediate clean-up of these buildings.

Merkel, 64, was addressing a receptive audience on Thursday as she seeks to halt a deterioration in the trans-Atlantic alliance under Trump’s presidency. In her 14th year in office, officials in Merkel’s government are beginning to speak of a point of no return in US-German relations. At times, Merkel drew applause from the crowd by seeming to address the US leader directly, urging graduates not to act on “first impulses” or to brandish “lies as truth and truth as lies.”

Some 2,000 miles to the west, Trump reprised his America First doctrine in a speech to the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, saying the US won’t sacrifice its interests for those of foreign powers. “We don’t do that anymore,” Trump told graduates. “In all things and ways we are putting America first. and it’s about time.”

Merkel is the first German leader to give an address at Harvard since 1990, when former Chancellor Helmut Kohl delivered it the year of German reunification.

One can understand why former British and French colonies from Africa through the Middle East to India, and Washington’s former colony in the Philippines and its Latin American puppet states would look with disfavor on white faces and use harsh language. But why do the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and white professors throughout the university system, school boards, white politicians, such as France’s Macron and the European Community’s Jean-Claude Juncker and Germany’s Merkel and a wide assortment of British and Scandinavian politicians demonize white people?

In Scandinavia a blonde woman who reports her rape by the latest wave of third world “migrants” invited into the country by the crazed Scandinavian politicians is dismissed as a racist. Scandinavian people have told me that it is becoming difficult to report any crime by migrants as the report borders on being a hate crime. Why is fake history created in order to support this hatred of white people?

Far from enjoying supremacy, white males are denied equality. They are discriminated against in university admissions and employment. Free speech is denied to them. According to military wives, white males are being denied promotions while the military achieves diversity balancing. Google fires white males for stating basic facts. White school boys are being browbeaten and feminized. The charge of white supremacy is being used to herd white people to the back of the bus. While they sit there and suck their thumbs, white people are being propagandized out of existence.

Iran ‘almost certainly’ attacked Saudi tankers - US National Security Advisor John Bolton claimed this week that Iran was “almost certainly” behind a recent attack on ships, including two Saudi oil tankers, in the Gulf of Oman. Not one for detail, Bolton declined to offer actual evidence to back up the allegation.

‘Highly likely’ Russia poisoned Skripal - British Prime Minister Theresa May barely waited until the doctors had examined Sergei and Yulia Skripal before accusing Russia of being behind their poisoning last March. May quickly rallied Western governments, prompting a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats without providing any actual evidence of Moscow’s guilt. She emphatically told Parliament that Russia was“highly likely” the culprit. Mainstream media, of course, instantly jumped on that bandwagon and dissenting voices were banished from the airwaves.

Beluga whale ‘most likely’ spying for Putin - In April, Western media was hysterical over the discovery of a Beluga whale “with suspected Russian military ties.” The whale, spotted by a fisherman in Norwegian waters, was wearing a harness, which led to suggestions that some nefarious Russian activity was going on. One expert at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsoe took a leaf out of the CIA’s book, telling the media that the whale was “most likely” trained by Russia for military purposes. The claim was repeated ad nauseam until it was countered by another Norwegian report that the whale could actually have been trained to entertain children. Oops!?

Assad ‘highly likely’ responsible for Douma - Syrian President Bashar Assad was “highly likely” responsible for a chemical attack on the city of Douma in 2018, according to the British government. The incident was used as an easy pretext for US, British and French bombing in Syria. Surely, they would never lie to us?

NotPetya cyber attack ‘almost certainly’ Russia - Both the US and British governments also blamed Russia (surprise!) for the so-called NotPetya cyber attack which hit companies and government systems around the world in 2017, with London saying Moscow was "almost certainly" behind it. Several Russian companies were also targeted in the attack and officials never gave evidence or explained why the attack was instantly blamed on Russia.

But, while government officials, experts and the media often happen to point the finger without evidence, it's "highly likely" that they aren't always correct.

In one of the most disturbing moments we’ve ever seen promoted on television, the UK’s Channel 5 — which is owned by the media leviathan, Viacom — is promoting the relationship between a 16-year-old girl and a 44-year-old man. Instead of calling this what it is, the television network called it age-gap love. While the legal age of consent in the UK is 16, the program admits that the affection Andy had toward his child wife Beth began well before this age.

The mainstream media works diligently to alter and shape our perceptions and values. It seems clear that the propagandists are attempting to engineer a society that is accepting of pedophilia as a normalized behavior. Both Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman have publicly discussed the fact that Hollywood is a den of pedophilia – noting that numerous powerful moguls and others within the Hollywood scene prey on the vulnerable like “vultures.”

Revealing exactly how the normalization propaganda operates, the New York Times published an op-ed proclaiming that pedophilia is “not a crime” – instead sympathetically characterizing pedophilia as a “disorder” that “these people [pedophiles] are living with.” The sell is that people who rape, or who fantasize about exploiting or raping children are portrayed as victims living with a condition that they have little choice over. Now, as this terrifying show on a Viacom network illustrates, we are being told that pedophiles should not only be blameless — but glorified. A disgusting precedent indeed.

Britain led the way in the popular uprising, with Nigel Farage’s newly formed Brexit movement taking almost a third of the vote and becoming the biggest single party in the European Parliament. Labour collapsed, the Tories were annihilated. The same pattern was repeated elsewhere. In Germany, a surge for the Greens brought the long dominant Christian Democrats their worst result in decades.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally topped the poll, and the two traditional centrist parties – the Republicans and the Socialists – almost disappeared. Even more dramatic gains for the Eurosceptics could be found in Italy. The nationalist League was far in front, with 34 per cent of the vote, while the maverick, rebellious Five Star movement won 17 per cent, putting the Italian anti-EU forces in an absolute majority.

Populists also triumphed in Hungary, where the Viktor Orban Civic Alliance gained no less than 52 per cent of the vote, and in Poland, where the right-wing Law and Justice party was victorious with 46 per cent. Indeed, throughout Europe there were advances for anti-establishment politicians - whether it be the Greens in Ireland or the nationalists in Sweden.

Across Europe, people want their countries back. They have had enough of betrayal. They prefer to govern themselves rather than be ruled by unelected officials. They are tired of being labelled bigots simply for feeling a sense of patriotism, that noble ideal which is really an extension of love of family. The real extremists are those EU zealots who show contempt for the ideas of national pride and sovereignty.