HellsBelle

A Palestinian man who was dismissed from his job in Gaza after the war broke out is suing the European Union for allegedly breaching Belgian law.

He had been evacuated to Cairo after the war broke out with the assistance of the EU and continued to work there, as did other colleagues in the West Bank.

But he was dismissed this year after the EU decided to close the office in Rafah due to the war.

In the claim submitted to a Brussels tribunal, his lawyer, Selma Benkhelifa, states that Baraka “does not criticise the decision to close the Rafah office” as “the security situation justifies this”.

However, she states that his EU counterparts, who also worked for EUBam in Rafah, “were not dismissed, they were transferred elsewhere” to continue work, giving alleged grounds for “discrimination on the basis of his nationality.”

Is the United States about to start testing nuclear weapons again? Recent comments by United States President Trump suggested that he is strongly considering testing nuclear warheads in response to real and perceived tests by other nuclear powers.

These comments left many confused about the future of US policy and the state of intelligence on adversary nuclear programs.

So what’s going on? As is often the case, President Trump seems to prize unpredictability.

We don’t know what’s going to happen, but it wouldn’t hurt to review where we’ve been.

In October, a Trump benefactor gave $130 million to stave off what would have been a major political liability and cover the paychecks for service members during the government shutdown. The office space Eleanor Roosevelt once occupied has been unceremoniously bulldozed to make way for a gargantuan ballroom, also being funded by corporate “donations” from the likes of BlackRock, Booz Allen Hamilton, and tech giants like Apple and Amazon. The sticker price of the project has soared from $200 million to $350 million. To add insult to injury, the donors will likely write off their bribes to the latest Trump event venue as charitable contributions, as economist Dean Baker laid out. The president is working to intervene in negotiations around the sale of Warner Brothers–Discovery to ensure that his longtime supporters, the Ellisons, are able to add on to their growing media empire. And that’s just the past couple of weeks!

It’s not for nothing that my colleagues at the Revolving Door Project have had more than enough material for a biweekly rundown in our Corruption Calendar. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also recently published a timeline tracking national and state corruption since January 20.

While Trumpian corruption is striking in frequency, scale, and just how routine it is starting to feel, this administration was the logical endpoint of the long-standing tradition of elite impunity. The second Trump administration is a striking monument to governmental misconduct, but the ground was broken long ago, with both parties laying the foundation. For the past half century, corporate and white-collar crime have gone largely unenforced. This was the result of both a widespread shift in views of governance (à la the Reagan Revolution) and a coordinated plan orchestrated to enable private wealth to hijack our democracy, as David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher documented in their new book “Master Plan,” building on a podcast of the same name.

American inspections of foreign food facilities — which produce everything from crawfish to cookies for the U.S. market — have plummeted to historic lows this year, a ProPublica analysis of federal data shows, even as inspections reveal alarming conditions at some manufacturers.

About two dozen current and former Food and Drug Administration officials blame the pullback on deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration. The stark reduction marks a dramatic shift in oversight at a time when the United States has never been more dependent on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit.

The stakes are high: Foreign products have been increasingly linked to outbreaks of foodborne illness. In recent years, FDA investigators have uncovered disturbing lapses in facilities producing food bound for American supermarkets. In Indonesia, cookie factory workers hauled dough in soiled buckets. In China, seafood processors slid crawfish along cracked, stained conveyor belts. Investigators have reported crawling insects, dripping pipes and fake testing data purporting to show food products were pathogen free.

A court document reveals what a criminologist calls a "striking list" of offences by a Winnipeg police officer who used his position to engage in a range of illegal activity for which he's now expected to serve prison time.

Const. Elston Bostock leaked police information to associates involved in illicit activity, shared a photo of a dead topless woman with other officers, used his connections to get contacts out of tickets, and took goods — including whisky and cigars — in exchange for favours and more, a court heard Friday.

"It really was quite a striking list of charges against this officer," said Frank Cormier, a criminologist and instructor in the sociology department at the University of Manitoba.

"The best way to describe it is that it's certainly not common, but it's not nearly as uncommon as it should be."

With flu cases now rising in Canada, medical experts are bracing for a difficult influenza season linked to the global spread of an evolving H3N2 strain that could be a mismatch for this year’s vaccine.

The ongoing flu season abroad has been marked by record case counts in the southern hemisphere, and an early start to the season across parts of Asia and the U.K. As Canada heads into the winter, it could be a bellwether of what’s to come.

There's speculation that a mutating type of H3N2 is behind that early surge. It's a strain of influenza A that's typically known for more severe infections, especially among older people. But what's particularly troubling some experts this year is that those latest mutations are widening the gap between this virus and our available flu shot.

TO JUSTIFY ITS deadly strikes on alleged drug-smugglers at sea, the Trump administration now claims that there are 24 designated terrorist organizations engaging in armed conflict with the United States, three government sources told The Intercept.

The list of groups supposedly engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with the United States includes the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; Ejército de Liberación Nacional, a Colombian guerrilla insurgency; Cártel de los Soles, a Venezuelan criminal group that the U.S. claims is “headed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals”; and several groups affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to two of those government sources who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose classified information. The full list has not been disclosed, even to all lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee.

“The administration has established a factual and legal alternate universe for the executive branch,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “This is the president, purely by fiat, saying that the U.S. is in conflict with these undisclosed groups without any congressional authorization. So this is not just a secret war, but a secret unauthorized war. Or, in reality, a make-believe war, because most of these groups we probably couldn’t even be in a war with.”

For the first time in more than 100 years Albertans are talking about a general strike, inflamed by the provincial government's use of the notwithstanding clause to force striking teachers back to work.

The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) includes 24 unions, representing 175,000 workers. Its president, Gil McGowan, also leads a larger collective called Common Front, which has agreed to treat an attack on some workers' rights as an attack on all workers’ rights.

McGowan has said unions will encourage workers — who are incensed by the provincial government’s suspension of bargaining rights — to volunteer for recall campaigns and prepare for a possible general strike.

But what are the legalities around a general strike? What moves could the Alberta government take to stop it? And if it does go ahead, when should it happen?

Mike Smith, the actor famous for playing Bubbles on Trailer Park Boys, has been charged with sexual assault.

According to court documents filed in Nova Scotia provincial court, Smith was charged on Oct. 2 in Halifax in relation to an alleged assault that occurred on Dec. 30, 2017 in Dartmouth, N.S.

According to a statement from Trailer Park Boys Inc., Smith has "stepped away" from his role as managing director of the company.

Mike Smith, the actor famous for playing Bubbles on Trailer Park Boys, has been charged with sexual assault.

According to court documents filed in Nova Scotia provincial court, Smith was charged on Oct. 2 in Halifax in relation to an alleged assault that occurred on Dec. 30, 2017 in Dartmouth, N.S.

According to a statement from Trailer Park Boys Inc., Smith has "stepped away" from his role as managing director of the company.

Donald Trump has said the US will not attend the G20 summit in South Africa over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in the country.

The US president said it was a "total disgrace" that South Africa is hosting the meeting, where leaders from the world's largest economies will gather in Johannesburg later this month.

South Africa's foreign ministry described the decision by the White House as "regrettable".

None of South Africa's political parties - including those that represent Afrikaners and the white community in general - have claimed that there is a genocide in South Africa.

The US wants countries to agree to hand over information on bugs that could cause large-scale disease outbreaks in return for restoring aid to tackle health problems such as HIV and malaria, according to government documents.

The Trump administration is seeking new bilateral aid agreements with dozens of countries, after an abrupt withdrawal from existing arrangements at the start of this year. The agreements form part of a new America First Global Health Strategy announced in September.

The move risks undermining global efforts to bring a new pandemic agreement into force and ensure countries get fair access to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics, advocates said.