HellsBelle

FOR THE BETTER PART of a century, there was one thing even the U.S. government would not do to pad the profits of defense contractors.

Now, more than 80 years of precedent may be coming to an end.

On Thursday, lawmakers in the House approved a “pilot program” in the pending Pentagon budget bill that could eventually open the door to sending billions to big contractors, while providing what critics say would be little benefit to the military.

The provision, which appeared in the budget bill after a closed-door session overseen by top lawmakers, would allow contractors to claim reimbursement for the interest they pay on debt they take on to build weapons and other gadgets for the armed services.

Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.

The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought.

The team say they found baked earth together with the earliest Stone Age lighter – consisting of a flint that was bashed against a rock called pyrite, also known as fool's gold, to create a spark.

From the journal Nature

Mahad Mohamud is slowly readjusting to the heat, chaos and tension of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, after being deported from the US city of Minneapolis last month just as winter was closing in there.

Somalis know the 36-year-old as Garyaqaan - a word that can be translated as "judge".

This is the name he uses on TikTok, where he attracted almost half a million followers while he was abroad. Fans praised Mahad for his defence of his clan's interests - part of Somalia's lucrative TikTok roasting sub-culture.

But to those running the White House-linked "Rapid Response 47" X account, Mahad was a "criminal illegal scumbag". In an October post it accused him of being "involved in the kidnapping of French officials" from a hotel in the Somali capital.

Mahad has denied the allegation, saying that he was not in Mogadishu at the time. He was never convicted and the case was dropped.

A lawsuit over the death of an 11-year-old California girl who was allegedly tortured and starved by her adoptive family reached a settlement on Friday totaling $31.5m from the city and county of San Diego as well as other groups.

The suit was brought on behalf of the two younger sisters of Arabella McCormack, who died in August 2022. The girls were ages six and seven at the time. Their adoptive mother, Leticia McCormack, and McCormack’s parents, Adella and Stanley Tom, are facing charges of murder, conspiracy, child abuse and torture. They pleaded not guilty to all charges, and their criminal case is ongoing.

The lawsuit said county social workers did not properly investigate abuse claims and two teachers at the Pacific Coast Academy failed to report the girl’s condition. It also said a San Diego police officer, a friend of the girl’s adoptive mother, gave the family a wooden paddle that they could use to hit their children.

San Diego sheriff’s deputies responded to a call of a child in distress at the McCormack home 30 August 2022. They found Arabella McCormack severely malnourished with bruises, authorities said. She was taken to a hospital, where she died.

A raccoon that broke into a Virginia store and joyfully drank its way through the liquor aisle is now suspected of a wider crime spree, officials say.

A Hanover animal control officer suspects the stripe-tailed mammal also broke into a nearby karate studio and then raided the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for snacks.

"Supposedly, this is the third break-in he's had," said Officer Samantha Martin.

Ms Martin says it's only a matter of time before the masked bandit strikes the shopping centre again.

FYI - there are tshirts and hoodies available, but only for another ~~41~~ 17 hrs.

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Another 81 women have joined a civil suit against a US army gynecologist who was recently criminally charged in connection with accusations that he secretly filmed dozens of his patients during medical examinations.

The civil lawsuit, which initially began in November, alleges that Blaine McGraw, a doctor and army major at Fort Hood in Texas, repeatedly inappropriately touched and secretly filmed dozens of women during appointments at an on-base medical center.

The women allege they were “subjected to invasive, unnecessary, and degrading touching, voyeurism, and covert filming”.

Attorneys for the alleged victims submitted an expanded complaint Wednesday, less than a day after the army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel filed criminal charges against McGraw. According to CNN, the criminal charges involve 54 specifications of “indecent visual recording” and other related offenses concerning 44 identified victims.

North Korea sent troops to clear mines in Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year, leader Kim Jong-un said in a speech carried on Saturday by state media, a rare acknowledgement by Pyongyang of the deadly tasks assigned to its deployed soldiers.

According to South Korean and western intelligence agencies, North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine.

Analysts say Russia is giving North Korea financial aid, military technology, food and energy supplies in return, allowing the diplomatically isolated nation to sidestep tough international sanctions on its nuclear and missile programmes.

On the morning of Thursday, July 31, James B. Milliken was enjoying a round of golf at the remote Sand Hills club in Western Nebraska when his cellphone buzzed.

Milliken was still days away from taking the helm of the sprawling University of California system, but his new office was on the line with disturbing news: The Trump administration was freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles, UC’s biggest campus. Milliken quickly packed up and made the five-hour drive to Denver to catch the next flight to California.

The grant freeze was the latest salvo in the administration’s broader campaign against elite universities, which it has pilloried as purveyors of antisemitism and “woke” indoctrination. Over the next four months, the Justice Department targeted UCLA with its full playbook for bringing colleges to heel, threatening it with multiple discrimination lawsuits, demanding more than $1 billion in fines and pressing for a raft of changes on the conservative wish list for overhauling higher education.

“MALE DETAINEE NEEDS to go out due to head trauma,” an employee at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention center in Georgia tells a 911 operator.

The operator tells the employee at Stewart Detention Center that there are no ambulances available.

“It’s already out — on the last patient y’all called us with,” the operator says.

“Is there any way you can get one from another county?” the caller asks.

“I can try,” the operator says. “I can’t make any promises, but I can try.”

The burden on rural Stewart County’s health care system is “unsustainable,” said Dr. Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention.

The British government threatened to defund the international criminal court and leave the Rome statute that set it up if it pressed ahead with plans to issue an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, the ICC’s prosecutor, has claimed.

Karim Khan made the allegation in a submission to the court defending his decision to prosecute Israel’s prime minister.

Khan does not name the individual who made the threats, saying the call on 23 April 2024 was with a British official, but reports have suggested the caller may have been the then British foreign secretary, David Cameron. Khan said the official had argued that issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defence minister, was disproportionate.

A brief mention of an abusive relationship between a Vancouver police officer and a teen he met at school in a recent police watchdog report shows a need for more transparency around the identities of officers who commit misconduct, says a civil liberties advocate.

Without knowing the officer’s name, the public has no way of knowing if he went on to work with another police department or to work with young adults, said Meghan McDermott, policy director with the BC Civil Liberties Association.

“Where is he now? He might be working as a member of the RCMP somewhere and he might be in a school in the Okanagan. We don’t know,” McDermott said.

Floodwaters reached Highway 1 in Abbotsford, located approximately 70 kilometres southeast of Vancouver on Thursday night, prompting new evacuation orders for seven properties close to the highway as water began spilling onto the roadway.

Those orders come on top of evacuations already affecting the region. Nearly 460 properties have so far been ordered to leave and another 1,069 properties remain on evacuation alert in Abbotsford.

The city says the flooding has forced the closure of Highway 1 in both directions between Sumas Road and No.3 Rd. Drivers are being asked to avoid the area and check DriveBC for updates as conditions continue to change.