Friday, February 23, 2018

In the news, Friday, February 2, 2018


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FEB 01      INDEX      FEB 03
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from BBC News (UK)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS

Sprawling Maya network discovered under Guatemala jungle
Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Maya ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough. Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications. The landscape, near already-known Maya cities, is thought to have been home to millions more people than other research had previously suggested.

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from Columbia Basin Herald
Newspaper in Moses Lake, WA

SCHOOL REPORTING BILL CLEARS STATE HOUSE COMMITTEE
A bill that would allow school districts across the state to use a mobile app to allow students to report violence or dangerous situations anonymously at school has cleared a key state legislative committee. According to Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, House Bill 2442, which cleared the House Education Committee on Wednesday, would give students in Washington state “a fast, secure and anonymous way method to report threatening activities.”

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS

In the Sports-Subsidy Game, Taxpayers Always Lose
This Sunday, we will watch athletes who earn an average annual salary of nearly $3 million compete to become champion of a league that makes more than $14 billion a year in revenue – in between commercials that cost $5 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Big league sports do not need to be subsidized by taxpayers.

Job and GDP Growth Numbers Signal Improving Economy
Today’s jobs numbers, which were modestly above expectations, are yet another sign that the economy is starting to pick up steam as a result of free-market supply-side stimuli. The economy added 200,000 more jobs in January, above the expected number of 180,000.

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from Ellensburg Daily Record
Newspaper in Ellensburg, WA

Washington carbon tax measure clears Senate committee
A measure to tax fossil fuel emissions to fight climate change has cleared a Senate committee. The Senate energy, environment and technology committee amended and approved Senate Bill 6203 Thursday night. It now goes to a fiscal committee. The bill proposes a new tax of $10 per metric ton of carbon emissions, lower than the $20 per ton originally proposed by Gov. Jay Inslee. The tax would begin in 2019 and in 2021 would increase $2 per ton each year until it is capped at $30 a ton.

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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

What Caused the Great Depression?
The definitive guide to the key events and policies that caused the Great Depression.
Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America’s Great Depression—and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair.

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, daily newspaper

After 400 years lost, 'cursed' novel of Spain's imperial age is finally published
Four hundred years after it was written, a lost and supposedly cursed Golden Age novel chronicling the splendour, adventure and violence of Spain’s imperial zenith has been published for the first time. Historia del Huérfano, or The Orphan’s Story, charts the progress of a 14-year-old Spaniard who leaves Granada and heads to the Americas to seek his fortune. Its hero ricochets around the Spanish empire, from the high-society fiestas of Lima to the mephitic mines of Potosí, and goes on to witness Sir Francis Drake’s attack on Puerto Rico and the sacking of Cádiz. After romantic escapades and the odd shipwreck and run-in with pirates, the soldier-cum-missionary finally manages to embrace the calm of monastic life in the capital of viceregal Peru.

Canterbury artefacts 'may have been stolen by metal thieves'
Two suspected metal thieves are believed to be behind the theft of an archaeological hoard including hundreds of Anglo-Saxon beads and iron age coins, having apparently stumbled on the artefacts while scavenging for copper pipes and wiring. Canterbury Archaeological Trust is appealing for the public’s help in scanning online sale sites such as eBay for any sign of the artefacts stolen in three raids last month at its warehouse, in the north-east of the city.

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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website

Human progress is neither linear nor guaranteed. And while the world is getting better across a multitude of indicators of human well-being, individual countries can and do regress – sometimes dramatically. Perhaps no two countries exemplify that fact as well as Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Both nations took a decidedly wrong turn at the end of the last millennium and descended into poverty and dictatorship. What explains the long-term survival of their reprehensible regimes? Simply put, both regimes appear to prioritize their hold on power at almost cost to the population. Indeed, by immiserating their people, they have in many ways strengthened their positions.

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from KIRO Radio 97.3 FM (MyNorthwest.com)
Media/News Company in Seattle, Washington

A Washington state Senate committee approved a measure to tax fossil fuel emissions in an effort to fight climate change. However, some lawmakers are questioning the actual effect a carbon tax might have on global warming. “People don’t want this. Particularly when it does absolutely nothing,” Senator Doug Ericksen told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. “This isn’t going to make the wine grapes grow better in Walla Walla, get rid of forest fires, make the snow packs better. It has zero impact except on the pocket books of the people that get to spend the surplus slush fund that they’re going to generate off working families.”

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from The Liberty Review
[Information from this site may be unreliable.]

We Should All Know the Man Who Helped End Communism in Russia
Heroes for liberty are not peculiar to any region of the world or to a particular time period or to one sex. They hail from all nationalities, races, faiths, and creeds. They inspire others to a noble and universal cause — that all people should be free to live their lives in peace so long as they do no harm to the equal rights of others. They are passionate not solely for their own liberty, but for that of others as well. It is time to give an important figure in recent Russian history his historical due—Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A leading figure in the latter years of the Soviet government, Yakovlev began his career as a Red Army officer and a Communist Party apparatchik, but he ultimately became a devoted and effective enemy of Soviet tyranny. He will be remembered as the architect of “perestroika” (restructuring of the political and economic systems) in the late 1980s and its consequences: exposure of the heinous lies and crimes of the criminal Soviet regime and the inevitable demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). For most of his life, Yakovlev was a closet classical liberal in one of the most illiberal and collectivist societies in history. He did not share either the socialist or Russian nationalist worldviews.

North Korean Defector Notes What Surprised Him Most Once Outside
Many North Koreans are amazed by life in South Korea, and that was no different for Ji Seong-ho, the remarkable young defector who made a special appearance at the State of the Union address Tuesday night. Ji endured starvation, suffered severe injuries, lost loved ones, and experienced firsthand the Kim regime’s brutality before he left North Korea. His journey to freedom was marked by pain, tears, and incredible hardship. When he finally reached South Korea, “it was beyond my expectations,” he revealed in an interview with The Daily Caller. But, what shocked him most about life in South Korea was not the impressive advancements of an unshackled, free society; rather, it was the trash cans. “When I was in North Korea, I dug through the trash but struggled to find food,” he explained, “In South Korea, I found trash cans full of food.”

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from The Living Church
Magazine of The Living Church Foundation (Anglican)

Another Angle on Cradles
The question is whether we can learn to use religious language as a form of self-emptying, not self-justification.

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from PBS (& affiliates)

The U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports from aid groups and others that the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin on its citizens, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday. “We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.” He said he was not rebutting the reports. “We’re looking for evidence of it, since clearly we are dealing with the Assad regime that has used denial and deceit to hide their outlaw actions,” Mattis said.

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from Psephizo  (blog)

Can we be virtuous in an age of social media?
In reflecting upon the significance of social media, many commentators, both Christian and non-Christian, have naturally been drawn to the sorts of language and frameworks afforded by virtue ethics, even when they may not have realized it. Such commentators recognize that social media encourages certain sorts of communities and that it is structuring and forming us, often in disquieting ways. For instance, many have observed that being on social media has led them and others of their acquaintance to become more short-tempered, anxious, distracted, fractious, ungracious, and unkind.

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from Redoubt News
CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE,  MIXED,  right wing militia movement blog

FISA MEMO Released to the Public
The controversial FISA Memo has been declassified by President Donald Trump and released to the public by Congress. Before the release, President Trump was asked about the 4 page document and said, “A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves.” The memo, also known as the ‘Nunes Memo’, outlines alleged violations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) within their investigation during the 2016 Presidential election cycle. The memo outlines how Christopher Steele, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign, compiled a dossier which formed the basis for the Carter Page FISA application. Steele, a longtime FBI Informant, was paid $160,000 by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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