August, 2019

Rodolfo Montoya, of Huntington Beach, California, was allegedly plotting to murder his Marriott co-workers. The 37-year-old hotel cook told a colleague about his deadly intentions who told his manager Imran Ahmed. Ahmed called the Long Beach Police Department who raided Montoya's home and found the weapons haul. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, shotgun cartridges, tactical gear and high-powered rifles were seized. With the stockpile of weapons, he was capable of carrying out a mass shooting akin to the Las Vegas attack. Montoya was charged with manufacturing and distributing assault weapons, possession of an assault weapon and making a criminal threat. He is currently being held on $500,000 bail at the Long Beach City Jail

Greece vowed Wednesday to refuse help to an Iranian ship that was recently detained in Gibraltar on suspicion of carrying oil bound for Syria days after the U.S. threatened sanctions on any country that offered aid to the tanker believed to be linked to an Iranian terrorist organization as it passed through Mediterranean waters, a report said.

Deputy foreign minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis told broadcaster ANT1 Greece was “not willing to facilitate the course of this ship to Syria” and pointed out the tanker, which is carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil, is too large for any Greek port to accommodate, BBC News reported.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) gives her perspective on the electoral college in a video post on her Instagram feed of her driving through rural America: "The Electoral College has a racial injustice breakdown... Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a 'one person, one vote' system where all our votes are counted equally."

there is ample reason to believe that faith in a higher power is associated with health, and in a positive way. For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness.”

• China's ability to quickly finance its military has the Pentagon especially eager to develop hypersonic weapons, amid a budding arms race between the world's top two economies.
• The United States does not have a defense against hypersonic weapons, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound, or a little more than a mile per second.
• The Pentagon has nearly a dozen programs tasked with developing and defending against the new breed of weapons.

A federal court judge on Wednesday ruled that President Trump can immediately challenge congressional Democrats' Emoluments Clause lawsuit against him, saying the litigation raises the "unsettled" question of whether politicians have standing to sue a sitting president for running international businesses. The development was a major victory for Trump, who has railed against what he has called politically motivated invocations of the Emoluments Clause.

This unmarked stone crypt at an exclusive Jewish mausoleum is the likely final resting place of Jeffrey Epstein, DailyMail.com can reveal. Sources believe the pedophile financier's remains were transported to Loxahatchee, Florida so they could be entombed beside his parents, Pauline 'Paula' and Seymour Epstein...

Mr. Trump is taking the action in a speech to the 75th annual American Veterans convention in Louisville, Kentucky. He said the memorandum directs the Education Department to eliminate “every penny” of student loan debt for those disabled veterans. There are more than 40,000 veterans nationwide who qualify for debt forgiveness under action taken by the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs last year. But only a fraction of those eligible has taken advantage of the program by applying for help. Bipartisan legislation was introduced in June in Congress that would dismiss all federal student loan debt for eligible veterans, whether or not they applied for the program.

Migrants in Germany who return to Syria for holidays may lose their refugee status, according to German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. "If somebody, a Syrian refugee, regularly takes holidays in Syria, he cannot honestly claim to be persecuted in Syria," Seehofer told Bild am Sonntag weekly, adding "We would strip him of his refugee status." If German officials learn that a migrant is on holiday in the nation they claim to have fled, a probe will be launched into their refugee status, Seehofer added.

The meme, which appeared as a block of text, went viral on Tuesday claiming Instagram is planning to roll out new changes to its privacy policy to let old messages and private photos be used in court cases against its users. "Everything you've ever posted becomes public from today," the post states. "Even messages that have been deleted." The message urges users to share the image, saying that it would "give notice to Instagram [that] it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action" against anyone who reposted it... It's a similar hoax that has long made the rounds on Facebook that claims photos and other content will become property of the company unless users repost the message... But an Instagram spokesperson told CNN Business "there is no truth" to the viral meme.

The Pentagon said on Monday it had tested a conventionally configured cruise missile that hit its target after more than 500 km (310 miles) of flight, the first such test since the United States pulled out Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper was asked in a Fox News Channel interview on Wednesday whether the test was aimed at sending a message to China, Russia or North Korea and indicated that the main concern was China...

If death is in the cards, it may also be in your blood...

Replacing nukes with satellites may not address some of the main problems facing Musk's dreams of terraforming Mars. A paper published in Nature Astronomy last year concluded that releasing Mars' CO2 wouldn't be enough to adequately transform its atmosphere for two reasons.

First, the researchers found, there isn't enough CO2 trapped in the poles to produce an intense enough greenhouse effect. And second, unlike Earth, Mars' atmosphere is continuously being lost, so any gases produced would slowly drift away into outer space...

Scientists found that these TB bacteria secrete a protein called MPT63, which might be the reason behind the sac break. When there is acidity, these protein structures change their formation and suddenly become toxic to the host cells (macrophages). This ends up killing the cell and releasing the bacteria.
[...]
Now with this discovery, scientists will begin looking for methods to negate the effect of the MPT63 protein. Keeping the TB locked-in permanently and saving millions of patients every year.
The results of the study will be published in the Journal of ACS Chemical Biology...

Michael Bowman faced misdemeanor charges for willful failure to file a return. He was also initially charged with felony tax evasion, but his public defender, Matt Schindler, got that charge thrown out for lack of evidence. Bowman said he objects to paying taxes for religious reasons. He said he does not want his money to go toward funding abortions... Bowman believes the First Amendment, the Oregon Constitution, and the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act protect his right to make that choice. He said he is innocent... After 11 hours of deliberation, Bowman's case ended in a mistrial because the jury couldn't reach a verdict... The government has not said yet if it plans to refile the charges. Schindler said they have a meeting with the judge this week and is expecting he will have to take this case to court again.

Adm. Craig Faller, who oversees the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said Tuesday that the Navy must be ready to "do what needs to be done" on Venezuela."I won't speak to details of what we're planning and what we're doing, but we remain ready to implement policy decisions, and we remain on the balls of our feet," Faller told reporters. He added: "The United States Navy is the most powerful Navy in the world. If a policy decision is made to deploy the Navy, I'm convinced that we'll be able to do what needs to be done." Faller made the remarks in Rio de Janeiro, a large seaside city in Brazil, as the US launched UNITAS 2019, a multinational war exercise that is conducted annually in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Forest fires in the Amazon are generating smoke that can be seen from space and may have caused a daytime blackout more than 1,700 miles away in the country's largest city... the country's space agency The National Institute for Space Research said its satellite data detected more than 72,000 fires since January, an 83% increase over the same period of 2018...