Leopold killed millions

The family of a Texas soldier who was sexually harassed and killed at a military base near Killeen, Texas in 2020 filed a lawsuit Friday seeking $35 million in damages from the U.S. government. The family of 20-year-old Vanessa Guillen is seeking damages on the basis of sexual harassment, abuse, assault, rape, sodomy and wrongful death. An investigation by military officials into the death of Guillen, who was killed by a fellow soldier at U.S. Army base Fort Hood, found that she was also sexually harassed and that leaders failed to take appropriate action. The lawsuit describes two instances in which Guillen was harassed during her time as a soldier and Guillen’s suicidal thoughts as a result of coping with the harassment, which she told family that she did not report for fear of retaliation. “This will be an opportunity for every victim to feel not only like they have a voice but that they can be made whole,” said Natalie Khawam, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of … [Read more...] about Family of slain Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen seeks $35 million in damages

William Ruto was Monday declared the victor of Kenya’s hard-fought presidential poll, but the outcome sparked a split in the election commission and some violent protests in his defeated rival’s strongholds. Ruto won with 50.49 percent of the vote on August 9, narrowly ahead of Raila Odinga on 48.85 percent, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Wafula Chebukati announced after an anxious days-long wait for results. With tensions running high after the disputed outcome, the 55-year-old president-elect vowed to work with “all leaders”. “There is no room for vengeance,” said Ruto. “I am acutely aware that our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck.” AFP correspondents reported that police fired live rounds as protests erupted in a Nairobi slum that is an Odinga stronghold. Police also fired tear gas in his lakeside bastion of Kisumu where demonstrators threw stones and erected roadblocks with large chunks of rock. “We were cheated,” Isaac Onyango, … [Read more...] about Kenya’s William Ruto Declared President-elect in Disputed Vote Outcome

Ankita Mukhopadhyay always knew there was pain in her grandfather’s past. As a kid, she didn’t understand the depth of it, but she heard his stories about 1947. Families pushed from the rooftops of houses, bodies in the street. Unable to return to his home in what is now Bangladesh after the partition, he carried a lifelong sadness with him that she couldn’t quite explain. “I used to send him letters in English. He used to tear apart my letters in front of me and say, ‘This is the language of our colonizers. I do not want you to write letters to me in the language of my colonizer,’” she recounted to NBC Asian America. Now 29 and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mukhopadhyay is far removed in time and distance from the India-Pakistan partition. But 1947’s violence has shaped lives, and its impacts still linger in the South Asian diaspora. Parents and grandparents who survived it have shared their stories, and 75 years later, a dwindling group of South Asians remembers … [Read more...] about South Asians from Oklahoma to London share how partition shaped their identities

The future looks bleak for the vast majority of Afghans. At least 43% of the population is living on less than one meal a day and 97% of Afghans are expected to be living below the poverty line by the end of this year. Some families have resorted to selling their organs to eat and others have sold their own children in order to survive. “As global leaders sought to economically isolate the Taliban, their policy approaches have crippled the economy, destroyed the banking sector and plunged the country into a humanitarian catastrophe that has left more than 24 million without enough food to eat each day,” Vicki Aken, Afghanistan director of the International Rescue Committee, said Friday. The organization added that unless this is addressed, the current humanitarian crisis could lead to more deaths than 20 years of war. In the year since the ultraconservative, insular and violent Taliban returned to power, this desperately poor and violent country has rapidly deteriorated. … [Read more...] about Life in Afghanistan after a year under the Taliban takeover

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price incorrectly labeled the Haqqani network and the Taliban as “separate entities” on August 27, 2021, when responding to a reporter’s question at a press briefing concerning the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan that month. Nearly one year after the U.S. State Department made the false designation, Washington’s announcement on August 2 that it ordered the successful assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul on July 30 seemed to confirm not only al-Qaeda’s continued presence in Afghanistan but also how closely intertwined the Haqqani Network remains with al-Qaeda. Biden’s administration extended the 20-year Afghan war beyond the May 1, 2021, deadline set under predecessor Donald Trump into August. Biden’s administration announced on August 14, 2021, that all U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, to end the 20-year-long … [Read more...] about Taliban, Haqqani Network Closer than Ever, a Year After Biden Admin Claim They Were ‘Separate Entities’

The budget reconciliation bill just passed by the Senate and heading for final congressional approval offers dramatic improvements in American policies aimed at fighting global warming and improving healthcare. There’s too much in this legislative smorgasbord that Democrats have dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act to cover in one sitting, so I’ll focus on one topic that’s sure to interest almost everybody: taxes. The measure addresses tax policy in two major ways. One is a steep increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service. These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans. — IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, assuring the Senate that he’ll use agency funding to go after rich tax avoiders The IRS has been on a congressionally imposed starvation diet virtually since the 1970s, which has been a get-out-of-paying ticket for corporations and the wealthy for all that time. Advertisement … [Read more...] about Column: Tax provisions may be Democrats’ most unexpected victory in the inflation bill

EXCLUSIVE: Biden’s CIA Director Employed Undisclosed Chinese Communist Party Members While Heading Elite DC Think Tank Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns formerly headed an influential D.C. think tank while it employed undisclosed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members as well as individuals with Chinese government ties, the Daily Caller News Foundation has found. During Burns’ tenure as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from February 2015 to November 2021, the think tank employed at least 20 policy experts whom the DCNF has identified as CCP members. These CCP members worked at both Carnegie’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and Carnegie-Tsinghua — the Beijing center Burns’ predecessor, Jessica Mathews, launched in 2010 in cooperation with Tsinghua University. Disgraced Ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok Says Americans Should ‘Absolutely’ Trust FBI After Trump Raid Former FBI Counterintelligence Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok … [Read more...] about Editor Daily Rundown: Biden’s CIA Director Employed Undisclosed Chinese Communist Party Members

For most people, Memorial Day is a time to honor those lost in wartime. For a small minority though, it's a chance to invite all of your Tinder matches to a barbeque at once. User dhm2293 caused a stir on Reddit 's r/Tinder sub after asking all of his dating app matches if they wanted to come to his Memorial Day barbeque—at least 60 women. Since being shared on Thursday, the post has received 54,000 upvotes and over 3,300 comments from users wanting to know more. DeepEggs said: "Gonna need an update on this one." Broserdooder1981 commented: "Set up a live stream please ... i will cancel my weekend for this." SmittenKitten_1 agreed, writing: "I'm also going to motion for a livestream of this event. You'll end up on Kimmel when the video goes viral!" Dhm2293 told Newsweek ahead of the event that his goal for the party was just to "have fun and survive." He said: "They're actually Hinge matches. I decided to invite all of them because I had a ton of 'dead' … [Read more...] about Man invites more than 60 Hinge matches to Memorial Day BBQ: “legendary”

Volunteers for Russia's war in Ukraine are reporting that they have not been paid, adequately fed or given benefits they were promised, according to a new report. In addition to this, recruits have been put into positions they are not qualified for and believe their superiors are failing them in a multitude of areas, according to the report on Russia's military campaign in Ukraine. It was released Saturday by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank based in Washington, D.C. "Russian authorities have reportedly placed recruits with no experience into positions as commanding officers at the company level or higher," the report said. "[They] failed to provide sufficient food, ammunition, or cigarettes to soldiers, failed to provide for the funeral arrangements of volunteer soldiers killed in action." For the soldiers who have served in Ukraine and returned home, some have complained that they were "dumped in remote locations" without transport home once their … [Read more...] about Russia failing to properly pay, feed military recruits in Ukraine–report

In a heart-wrenching display of self-preservation, a determined crayfish defied destiny and pulled off its own claw to escape a bowl of boiling water. A video shared on the Chinese social media site Weibo shows a crayfish—also known as a crawdad, crawfish, mudbug and freshwater lobster—at the edge of a pot of boiling water. Shockingly, the creature uses its right claw to pull off its left, leaving the wayward arm to become part of a meal, along with the other crayfish in the bowl, as you can see in the above video. "I let him live. I already took him home and am raising him in an aquarium," the user wrote, according to The Guardian . According to Time , the video went viral on Weibo and has more than a million views on Facebook. It's unclear exactly why the crayfish amputated its own claw; some speculated that the boiling water had already damaged it. However, the claw did not appear stuck. The video may make viewers question the ethics of boiling crustaceans like … [Read more...] about WATCH: Video shows crayfish pull off its own claw to escape boiling water