https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/life-altering-copyright-lawsuits-could-come-regular-internet-users-under-new-law

The Senate Judiciary Committee intends to vote on the CASE Act, legislation that would create a brand new quasi-court for copyright infringement claims. We have expressed numerous concerns with the legislation, and serious problems inherent with the bill have not been remedied by Congress before moving it forward. In short, the bill would supercharge a “copyright troll” industry dedicated to filing as many “small claims” on as many Internet users as possible in order to make money through the bill’s statutory damages provisions.

The legislation would allow the Copyright Office to create a “determination” process for claims seeking up to $5,000 in damages:

This could be read as permission for the Copyright Office to dispense with even the meager procedural protections provided elsewhere in the bill when a rightsholder asks for $5000 or less. In essence, what this means is any Internet user who uploads a copyrighted work could find themselves subject to a largely unappealable $5,000 penalty without anything resembling a trial or evidentiary hearing. Ever share a meme, share a photo that isn’t yours, or download a photo you didn’t create? Under this legislation, you could easily find yourself stuck with a $5,000 judgment debt following the most trivial nod towards due process.

>Reminder that literally every single thing uploaded to 4chan is someone's copyrighted work or a derivative of such and you could be charged 5,000 dollars a meme.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/europe/angela-merkel-shaking-scli-intl/index.html

Angela Merkel has been seen shaking in public for the second time in less than two weeks, raising concern over the wellbeing of the German chancellor.

Merkel, 64, appeared to clutch her arms together to keep herself still as she attended an event with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday.

The incident, at a farewell ceremony for Justice Minister Katarina Barley, was captured on a live feed by the Reuters news agency. At one point she was handed a glass of water, which she waved away.
Merkel's spokesperson later told CNN that the chancellor is "fine."

"Everything is taking place as planned. The chancellor is well," he added, indicating that Merkel would still take part in this weekend's G20 summit in Japan.
The chancellor attended the country's parliament half an hour later for the swearing-in of the new justice minister. According to Reuters, she then appeared relaxed and showed no signs of shaking as she talked and laughed with her vice chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
...

>A 2-year-old girl was eaten alive after falling into a pit of crocodiles on her family farm, say police in Cambodia.

>Rom Roath Neary's mother is said to have lost sight of her while she was busy caring for her newborn baby.

>The youngster reportedly wandered away from the house near Siem Reap Monday morning and was not seen alive again.

>The girl's father, Min Min, 35, returned home at 10 a.m. and began looking for the missing toddler.

>Horrifically, he found his daughter's skull stripped of flesh on the ground of a concrete enclosure where the crocs swim in a pool.

>Local media showed harrowing pictures of mom of three, Nay Is, 32, breaking down in tears as she clutched the toddler's remains to her chest.

>Police Chief Capt. Chem Chamnan said: "Her father found only her skull in the crocodile enclosure, where she was killed by crocodiles."

- https://www.foxnews.com/world/girl-2-eaten-by-crocodiles-after-falling-into-a-pit-on-familys-farm.amp

Is it bad that I got a little erect reading this?

its worth noting at this juncture that the only alternative leadership in america other than the intransigent entrenched establishment parties is crazy power mad billionaires.
hopefully they can get merle evans to play perot's funeral march (followed by 'didn't he ramble')

https://www.wsj.com/articles/h-ross-perot-texas-billionaire-who-twice-ran-for-president-has-died-11562682596

North Carolina’s lieutenant governor faces criticism for comments he made about American culture during a speech at a church in Salisbury.

Lt. Gov. Dan Forest faced pushback on social media Friday after liberal news outlet Think Progress posted a story about him warning Cornerstone Church in Salisbury that “diversity and multiculturalism” could be harmful to America. The church posted a video of the June 23 service on its Facebook page.

He compared current culture to 2 Timothy Chapter 3 of the Bible which, in the New International Version translation, says “There will be terrible times in the last days.”

“That’s where we find ourselves in America today,” Forest said.

He said God spiritually engineered the creation of the United States but that Satan is working to divide Americans.


“Sometimes, in today’s age, we call that identity politics,” Forest said. “Dividing and conquering. Black versus white. Rich versus poor, Republican versus Democrat, nation versus nation, and that’s how it goes today. That’s Satan’s plan, that’s his economy,” Forest said.

He offered his assessment of multiculturalism shortly after mentioning Satan’s intentions to divide the country. And then he outlined his hope for the nation.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article232077907.html

NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — Blaming manufacturing-job losses on low-wage foreign competition, or, increasingly, on automation has become a staple of populist politics in developed countries. Nowhere is this truer than in the United States, where President Donald Trump campaigned on the issue in 2016 and has since launched a trade war with China.

But U.S. workers have long faced another source of competition much closer to home: prison labor.

Many Americans may assume that the country’s convict-labor system is a thing of the past, especially given unflattering Western media coverage of other countries’ reliance on prison labor to produce export goods.

Prisoners are producing furniture for the University of Colorado for $2.45 per day. What are they, if not slaves?

But in 2005 — the most recent year for which a fairly complete set of countrywide data is available — America’s convict-labor system employed nearly 1.4 million inmates, of which about 600,000 worked in manufacturing. That is 4.2% of total U.S. manufacturing employment.

America’s prisons represent a large and growing pool of available labor: since 1932, the number of inmates in the U.S. has soared, from approximately 140,000 to more than 2.1 million in 2014.

They work for companies like Walmart WMT, +0.33% , AT&T T, +0.18% , Victoria’s Secret LB, +0.75% , and Whole Foods Market AMZN, +0.50% ; yet they earn less than $1 per hour, on average — far less than the legal minimum wage for non-incarcerated workers.

As a result, convict labor is not only exploitative; it also distorts market competition.


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-reason-your-wages-are-low-its-cheaper-to-hire-convicts-2019-07-12

A white Georgia couple evicted a white tenant because she invited a black family to the home she was renting, according to a federal lawsuit that says the landlords violated civil rights and fair housing laws.

The housing discrimination lawsuit filed Wednesday says Patricia and Allen McCoy used racial slurs when telling Victoria Sutton to leave the home. Reached by phone, Patricia McCoy said she hadn’t seen the lawsuit but said they didn’t kick Sutton out over black visitors.

“I kicked her out because she was so nasty,” McCoy said. “It was because of nastiness, tearing up everything and having a cat in the house when I told her she couldn’t have no animals.”

The lawsuit, filed on Sutton’s behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, says Sutton recorded Patricia McCoy repeatedly using a racial slur when she told Sutton she had to leave.

Sutton and her family moved into the house in Adairsville, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Atlanta, in August 2017.

As a black co-worker with a young child was leaving after a playdate with Sutton’s daughters on Sept. 30, 2018, the co-worker hugged Sutton goodbye. Later that day, Allen McCoy came to the house and called Sutton a ”(racial slur) lover,” the lawsuit says.

He told her he would call Child Protective Services for having a black person on the property and told Sutton she had two weeks to move out, the lawsuit says. When Sutton protested, McCoy told her to call his wife and threatened to call the police if Sutton’s black friend came onto his property again.

Sutton called Patricia McCoy and recorded the call, during which McCoy repeatedly used a racial slur, the lawsuit says. Patricia McCoy told her, “I don’t put up with (racial slurs) in my house and I don’t want them in my property.”

https://apnews.com/224fa29e32dc47ffbaaf65a89d3d60d7

Hopefully she gets 20.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/weird/Video-of-Girl-Licking-Blue-Bell-Ice-Cream-Linked-to-Store-in-Texas-512193512.html

https://edmontonsun.com/news/crime/missing-22-year-old-found-dead-case-ruled-as-homicide/wcm/bd7de1ce-7e4b-4437-a3ce-b52c6f9ded6c

>Police are investigating after a 22-year-old man missing since July 5 was found dead in Strathcona County.

>The body of Kevin William Sim was found in a field Wednesday morning near the intersection of Highway 14 and Highway 21 in Strathcona County.

>An autopsy was completed and his death has since been ruled a homicide, RCMP said in a news release Friday.

>Sim was last reported seen June 30 near 52 Avenue and 110 Street in the Southgate Mall area and his disappearance was considered out of character.

>In a YouTube clip published last year, the softly spoken Dr Kate Godfrey-Faussett takes to the stage, apologises for delaying lunch, stutters slightly – saying she has an entrenched fear of public speaking – before launching into an impassioned speech about the government’s “totalitarian endeavour to indoctrinate our children in sexual ideologies”.

>Godfrey-Faussett, who describes herself as a chartered psychologist and Muslim academic, is the latest voice entering the tinderbox row over LGBT lessons in Birmingham schools.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/23/lgbt-lessons-row-campaigner-dr-kate-godfrey-faussett-role-sparks-concern