July 20th, 2019

Professor Erik Millstone, who has been a long-time critic of the additive, argues that there are many scientific studies that raise legitimate safety questions together with circumstantial evidence of neurological harm. As a result, he is calling for the suspension of authorisation to sell or use aspartame in the EU pending an independent investigation. He argues that anything from 2-10 per cent of consumers suffer neurological effects, ranging from blurred vision to headaches and, in a small number of worst cases, seizures...

Equifax is reportedly close to reaching a $700 million settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies over its massive data breach in 2017. The money would also go towards resolving a consumer class-action lawsuit against the company, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon.

The Equifax data breach allowed hackers to steal the personal information of 147.7 million Americans from its servers, including Social Security numbers and home addresses. A House Oversight Committee report (PDF) released in December 2018 called the breach "entirely preventable," saying Equifax didn't take steps to prevent it and also wasn't ready to handle the aftermath...

“The traditional powers of the government to search people’s things when they’re entering the country might make sense if we’re talking about a suitcase, but they don’t make sense with our cellphones and laptops, which contain our emails and our browsing history and our photographs, and they’re truly a window to the soul,” said Adam Schwartz, a senior lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of 11 travelers. “The government has no business looking at this information unless they can persuade a judge they have probable cause there’s a crime afoot.”

U.S. Department of Justice attorney Michael Drezner, representing the government, said no court has ever required probable cause or a warrant for any border search of a person or property. “They’re bringing a claim that’s breathtaking in scope and would undermine the authority of border officers that’s been established for centuries,” Drezner said in court...

“The potential for miscalculation is high,” John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said at the Aspen Security Forum. “This kind of friction in a small waterway starts to increase the possibility of unintended conflict”... “I do worry — either through intention and misunderstanding our resolve, or, through an accident — that we could see the Iranians take some step that would be very concerning,” Rood added during a Saturday afternoon question-and-answer session. “That would be a grave mistake on their part that would be — it’s something that we are studiously trying to avoid.”

Aside from showing the popularity of Republican governors in the United States, the second-quarter results outlined in the survey revealed that all but three of the least popular governors in America are Democrats. While Democrat governors garnered an average net approval of +5 percent, Republican governors earned an average net approval of +19 percent.

According to the survey, the top 14 most popular governors, in terms of popularity, in the United States are: Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Republican Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Republican Indiana Gov. Brad Little, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt.

During the eight years of the Obama administration, 2,977 migrants died after illegally crossing the southwest border with Mexico — 372 per year on average, according to a report obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

During the first two complete fiscal years of the Trump administration, 581 migrants died — an average of 291 per year. Despite massively higher border apprehensions in Fiscal Year 2019, the number of deaths appears to be on par with the two prior years, according to the International Organization for Migrants’ Missing Migrant Project. This represents about a 20 percent drop from the Obama administration’s reported migrant deaths.

A Florida Democrat who ended her run for a seat in the state's House of Representatives late last month admitted to authorities that her claim of being a medical doctor who treated Pulse nightclub shooting victims in Orlando wasn't true, according to a charging affidavit released this week.

“I lied,” Elizabeth McCarthy told state investigators, Florida Politics reported. "It is a false statement." During her candidacy, McCarthy, 50, told people she was a doctor at Orlando Regional Medical Center and treated 32 victims of the 2016 massacre.

Researchers from around the Gulf and in New York have named the species the American pocket shark, or Mollisquama mississippiensis. It's only the third out of more than 500 known shark species that may squirt luminous liquid, said R. Dean Grubbs, a Florida State University scientist who was not involved in the research. He said the other two are the previously known pocket shark and the taillight shark , which has a similar gland near its tail.

Eric Sparkes absolutely denies claim that he told politician @itsericathomas to “go back where you came from.” He says the argument started over her using the express lane while having too many items. pic.twitter.com/ZikyJc81vf

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) 21. juli 2019

Researchers from Russia and the US teamed up to find a way to break, or at least bend, one of physics' most fundamental laws on energy... The second law of thermodynamics is less a hard rule and more of a guiding principle for the Universe. It says hot things get colder over time as energy transforms and spreads out from areas where it's most intense...

We can't post most of the article as it's not written in a friendly manner. But, the experiment according to the article can be summarized as follows:

• Step 1: line up three balls on a pool table.
• Step 2: knock the balls around with a pool stick.
• Step 3: hit the balls just right so they go back to lining up again.

Time travel!

ANON Writes: Here's the problem though; "Time can't really be reversed because time is merely a function of the second law of thermodynamics - Entropy. The only difference between T=1 and T=2 in the universe is that the total entropy has increased. Which is why the arrow of time always moves in one direction. This paper is trying to determine what the exact relation is between entropy and time by trying to reverse entropy locally and thus looking if time would also reverse. There is no true conclusion given outside, that on a quantum scale, reversed entropy looks exactly like reversed time".

TL;DR: Time travel is impossible and this paper is another piece of evidence that time is merely a function of entropy".

Hong Kong authorities seized a large haul explosives and weapons in a raid Friday, leading to an arrest and an investigation just as the city braces for another mass protest, according to local reports... The discovery comes ahead of the latest of ongoing demonstrations, in part calling on the city's chief executive, Carrie Lam, to resign after a widely criticized bill that would have cleared the way for extraditions to China.

A genetics expert hired by the family of a 15-year-old girl who disappeared in 1983 said Saturday that an underground space near a Vatican cemetery holds thousands of "adult and non-adult" bones that appear to be from dozens of individuals.The bones under the Teutonic College were revealed when experts hired by the Vatican began cataloging remains that were discovered nearby last week.
"We didn't expect such an enormous number," the expert Giorgio Portera said. "Thousands of bones have been found. That's the point we are at. Thousands of bones. I can't say if it's 1,000 or 2,000, but there are really very many, and so we assume [there is] the presence of the remains of a few dozen people."

“At about 4 a.m. today[Friday], a group of 47 undocumented individuals attempted to illegally enter the United States in three waves via the Pharr International Bridge. Ignoring commands to stop, the group suddenly rushed the temporary barricades, bent metal poles and disabled the concertina wire affixed to the barrier,” states the release.

Several males in the group physically pushed through the barriers and, when confronted by CBP, the individuals began assaulting officers and attempted to grab the officers’ protective devices... A group of 16 individuals, two of which will be charged with interference, were apprehended by CBP officers. Mexican officials responded, contained the remaining individuals and removed them from the bridge.

Sinema, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Doug Jones, D-Ala., joined Republicans in writing to President Trump urging the implementation of Operation Safe Return -- a Department of Homeland Security pilot program that that would focus on quickly identifying, processing and returning family units who do not have valid asylum claims in the U.S... The program would allow DHS to remove family units within 15 days who are determined not to meet the criteria of “credible fear” of returning home necessary for an asylum claim. Those who are initially deemed to meet the “credible fear” criteria can often have their asylum cases go on for years.

In North Carolina, during the past 18 months, more than 331 illegal aliens have been charged with 1,172 child rapes and child sexual assaults, according to data collected by an independent researcher. James Johnson, who tracks the data on his website NCFIRE.info (North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement), says he is only able to gather data from 30 of the state’s 100 counties, which means it’s likely the statewide count is significantly higher.

GateHouse Media and its publicly traded publisher New Media Investment Group is deep in talks to buy USA Today owner Gannett — a merger that would make America’s biggest newspaper chain even bigger, The Post has learned... “There’s about a 75 percent chance it happens,” a source close to the deal said...