Mother of two is ID'd as one of three people killed in Planned Parenthood shootings

Jennifer Markovsky was one of the three people killed in a shooting spree at a Planned Parenthood clinic here Friday, her father told The Denver Post on Sunday. John Ah-King said his daughter, a 35-year-old married mother of two, was accompanying a friend to the clinic when she was killed.
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Paris attacks: Obama pays respects at Bataclan theatre

US President Barack Obama has visited the scene of the Bataclan theatre attack in Paris, after arriving in the city for the UN climate change summit. Accompanied by French President Francois Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, he laid a single white rose at the venue where 90 people were killed. Security was stepped up for the visit, with helicopters flying overhead and roads in the area sealed off.
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1 in custody in threat at University of Chicago linked to Laquan McDonald shooting

An online threat to kill 16 white male students or staff in retaliation for the shooting of Laquan McDonald forced the University of Chicago to cancel classes and close its Hyde Park campus Monday, the Tribune has learned, and one person was taken into custody in connection with the threat to the campus.
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Officials: Hamburg votes 'No' in 2024 Olympics referendum

Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz announced that his city would not be hosting the Olympic Games in 2024. Hamburg's Office for Statistics confirmed that - despite not having the final count of the votes available yet - it would be impossible for supporters of the Olympic bid to get in a majority anymore. "Hamburg will not bid for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2024," Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz said. "The senate and I would have preferred a different decision, but it is a clear one."
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Judge sets $1.5 million bail for Chicago cop who killed teen

A judge considered dashcam video of the shooting in deciding whether to set bail.
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Brutal baboon battle erupts for throne at Toronto Zoo after matriarch dies

The fight that erupted between the female baboons prompted a brief closure of the zoo’s exhibit. Medical records show injuries ranging from deep lacerations near their eyes to hair ripped out and tail injuries. By Liam Casey.
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Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity From Microwave Technology Finally Medically Proven | TheSleuthJournal

Finally, there’s documented medical proof that electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real-time health issue that actually can be verified using standard medical procedures and testing capabilities. An international group of researchers aced it when they published their findings from the clinical study “Metabolic and Genetic Screening of Electromagnetic Hypersensitive Subjects as a Feasible Tool for Diagnostics and Intervention” in the November 2014 issue of Mediators of Inflammation.
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Russia ban signing of Turkish players

Relations between the countries have been strained since a Russian warplane was shot down by Turkish forces on the Syrian border, killing one pilot. Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport news agency that clubs had "already got the message". "If anyone wants [to sign a Turkish player] during the break, there will not be such a possibility," he said.
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'Everything points to' bodies in van in Mexico belonging to WA surfers, girlfriend says

Friends of two Australians missing for more than a week in Mexico will travel to Sinaloa following a report that the men’s van has been found, one of the friends said Sunday. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) issued a statement confirming that the pair’s vehicle had been found, but did not confirm reports that two bodies had been found inside the burnt out van.
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The Corrupt System That Killed Laquan McDonald

A Chicago cop now faces murder charges—but will anyone hold his colleagues, his superiors, and elected officials accountable for their failures? Thanks to clear video evidence, Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged this week with first-degree murder for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Nevertheless, thousands of people took to the city’s streets on Friday in protest. And that is as it should be. The needlessness of the killing is clear and...
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Rio De Janeiro's LGBT Pride Parade Turns 20 In Spectacular Fashion

Blame it on Rio. By Curtis M. Wong.
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Searching for Answers and Comfort After Killings at Planned Parenthood

After the congregation shared memories of a fallen police officer, Garrett Swasey, and cheered and cried through a grainy video of him competing at a 1992 skating championship, they bowed their heads on Sunday morning to pray for the man accused of killing him at a Planned Parenthood clinic. “Does anyone know the name of this man who shot Garrett?” asked Scott Dontanville, a pastor at Hope Chapel, where Officer Swasey had been a church elder.
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IS blamed for mass Yazidi grave found near Sinjar, Iraq

A booby-trapped mass grave containing the bodies of at least 110 people from the minority Yazidi sect has been found in northern Iraq, officials say. The grave was found close to the town of Sinjar after it was recaptured from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group earlier in November. IS captured Sinjar in August 2014, with reports of massacres and enslavement and rape of Yazidi women and girls. This is said to be the sixth mass grave found in or near the town.
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Swedish court: 'We cannot ban Pirate Bay'

After considering the case for almost a month, the District Court of Stockholm ruled that copyright holders could not make Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget block Pirate Bay. The court found that Bredbandsbolaget's operations do not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offences carried out by some of its 'pirate' subscribers. Pirate Bay is blocked by many European ISPs but anti-piracy outfits have always hoped that one day the notorious site would be restricted in Sweden.
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Udemy faces criticism for profiting from pirated online courses

Udemy, an online learning service, has come under criticism for selling pirated courses. The controversy began this week, when security specialist Troy Hunt discovered that one of his courses on ethical hacking was available on Udemy under another author's name. As The Next Web reports, the video had been edited to remove Hunt's introduction at the beginning, but was otherwise unchanged from the version available on Pluralsight, the video's copyright holder.
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Mexican activist killed; searched for missing students

When he felt authorities weren't doing enough to protect his hometown, he organized more than 100 women to police the streets. When 43 students went missing in a controversial case that drew global attention to Mexico's struggles with violence and corruption, he led search parties trying to find them. And when more families in his state came forward reporting that their loved ones had disappeared, he organized searches for them, too.
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Tesla wants to make fully self-driving cars happen way ahead of schedule

A week and a half ago, we learned that Tesla is on a quest to hire more engineers to accelerate the development of its self-driving car technologies. Tesla was already no slouch in the autonomous-vehicle world, having released its Autopilot feature into the wild just over a month ago. We sampled Autopilot as soon as it hit the streets and were quite impressed, to put it mildly.
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Vietnam law change introduces transgender rights

New legislation will allow those who have undergone reassignment to register under new gender as nation moves towards more progressive views on sexuality. Article by Agence France-Presse.
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"Concerned citizens" in Singapore start petition to stop Adam Lambert from headlining Singapore's New Year countdown concert

A petition to stop American Idol finalist Adam Lambert headlining Singapore's New Year concert has gathered more than 12,000 signatures. The reason? Adam Lambert is "hardly the kind of performer to send off our historic Jubilee year or to usher in the New Year," according to the petition. Article by Aza Wee Sile.
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Politician suggests Planned Parenthood should apologise as their clinic held under siege by shooter

An American congressman has attacked Planned Parenthood on live TV as a gunman engaged in an hour-long standoff with authorities at one of the women's health care clinics in Colorado. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, criticised Planned Parenthood's statement about the incident as "very premature", while speaking to CNN as the shooting took place.
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One of the Largest Hacks Yet Exposes Data on Hundreds of Thousands of Kids

The personal information of almost 5 million parents and more than 200,000 kids was exposed earlier this month after a hacker broke into the servers of a Chinese company that sells kids toys and gadgets, Motherboard has learned. The hacked data includes names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents who have bought products sold by VTech, which has almost $2 billion in revenue. The dump also includes the first names...
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Exposed: 'Full Range of Collusion' Between Big Oil and TTIP Trade Reps

Amid warnings that the proposed TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could undermine global attempts to rein in runaway climate change, new documents reveal that EU trade officials gave U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil access to confidential negotiating strategies considered too sensitive to be released to the European public.
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Throw some beans into the pot: Cannabis coffee makers hope to hook caffeine fans

It was during an endless drive home from a camping trip in eastern Washington that entrepreneur Adam Stites came up with his latest product. "What would happen if I infused heavy cream with cannabis, then mixed it with my coffee?" he mused. ("My VW van doesn't go very fast, so I have a lot of time to think," Stites explains.) He road-tested the idea as soon as he got home. So strong was the first dose, Stites woke up 13 hours after chugging a single cup.
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Spanish footballer gets one-year ban after being found guilty of trying to slap referee with penis

A footballer in Spain has been hit with a one-year ban after trying to hit an assistant referee with his penis during a game. A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of the Celtic de Pulianas player who sprinted onto the pitch during CD Abes vs Gabia CF and attempted to assault a female assistant referee with his penis. The player, from the Andalusian First Division, felt aggrieved about a decision and, in the 80th minute, took out his penis and...
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Japan under fire over decision to resume whaling

Officials maintain a third of previous numbers will be caught and insist plan is scientifically sound. However, the announcement has been condemned by environmental groups and the Australian and UK governments.
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Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen Resurface After Being Shut Down

A few days ago several large online repositories of free books and academic articles were pulled offline. Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen had their domain names taken away after Elsevier beat them in court. However, the site's operators are not planning to cease their activities and are continuing their operations through alternative domains and on the dark web.
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Chinese Cash Floods U.S. Real Estate Market (Video)

Canyon Lake Ranch was once a playground for Christian day campers, and then was a corporate retreat with water-skiing, barbecues and cowboy shoot-’em-up shows. Hawks now circle above 108 sunbaked acres occupied by copperhead snakes, a few coyotes and the occasional construction truck. Soon this ranch will be a gated subdivision of 99 mini-mansions designed for buyers from mainland China. The developer, Zhang Long, a Beijing businessman, is...
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Prominent pro-Kurdish lawyer shot dead in Turkey

A prominent pro-Kurdish lawyer was shot dead on Saturday in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir. Tahir Elci, the chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, was caught in the crossfire between Kurdish rebels and security forces while making a press statement in Diyarbakir, Turkish media reported. Elci, a highly influential figure with Kurds in Turkey, died after he was hospitalised, state broadcaster TRT said.
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Spiders sprayed with nanotubes have spun the toughest fibre ever measured

Spider silk is already one of the toughest materials around, but scientists have now made it even stronger by spritzing spiders with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes. In fact, the resulting super silk that the spiders produced in their webs is the toughest material ever measured, demonstrating strength and toughness beyond "anything that has been possible before," as MIT Technology Review reports. It sounds like something out of a Marvel comic...
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Russia Says Putin Is 'Fully Mobilized' to Tackle 'Unprecedented' Threat From Turkey

President Vladimir Putin is fully mobilized to tackle what the Kremlin regards as an unprecedented threat from Turkey following the shooting down of one of its warplanes by a Turkish F-16, the Russian leader's spokesman said on Saturday. In comments which underscore how angry the Kremlin still is over the incident, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, called the behavior of the Turkish air force "absolute madness" and said Ankara's subsequent handling of the...
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Mom told Denver police son in standoff was mentally ill, needed time

A Denver woman says her mentally ill son might still be alive if police had given him more time to surrender Sunday night before storming into a home where he had barricaded himself. "I told them my son was not mentally stable. He said, 'I'll come out. Just give me time,' " said Gema Martinez, the mother of 28-year-old Miguel Angel Martinez, who was shot to death Sunday in an exchange of gunfire with SWAT officers. "They have no compassion whatsoever. I have anger, and I hurt."
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Spiders Identified By DNA Extracted From Their Web

Scientists have successfully managed to extract DNA from spider webs, which not only identified a web's architect, but also what insects the spinner was feeding on. The proof-of-concept study, published in PLOS ONE, used captive southern black widow spiders to show that their webs contained enough fragments of DNA to potentially provide a reliable, non-invasive biomonitoring technique. Not only could the researchers identify the inhabitants...
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Apple Watch is 'showing signs of life' among holiday shoppers

The Apple Watch is "showing signs of life" heading into the holiday shopping season, according to channel-checks by FBR Capital Market's analyst Daniel Ives. With Black Friday underway and a continued shopping fervor still ahead, Ives writes in a note to investors this morning that observations at various Apple store as well as Target and Best Buy show customer interest — and willingness to shell out at least $349 for the cheapest version of the watch — ramping up.
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The Most Beautiful Bookstore On Earth

A merry band of bohemians built an improbable cultural haven in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Now, they must try to save it. Again.
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Cards Against Humanity Sells Nothing on Black Friday, Makes $71,000, Spends It Immediately

It's the third annual anti-Black Friday stunt from the card game company.
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The DEA has failed to eradicate marijuana. Some members of Congress want it to stop trying.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is not having a great year. The chief of the agency stepped down in April under a cloud of scandal. The acting administrator since then has courted ridicule for saying pot is "probably not" as dangerous as heroin, and more recently he provoked 100,000 petition-signers and seven members of Congress to call for his head after he called medical marijuana "a joke."
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Winter Storm Cara a Dangerous Plains Ice Storm

Ice, snow, and a sharp arctic blast is challenging Thanksgiving holiday travel in the Plains.
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If you want to see them, you’d better hurry. Iconic glaciers are disappearing — fast.

e river of ice that hugs Mount Grinnell’s high ridges is neither big nor particularly beautiful, but it may be the most accessible glacier in all of North America. In as little as three hours, an average hiker can traverse the mountain’s well-groomed trail to plant a foot on a frozen relic of the Little Ice Age. But if you want to see it, you’d better hurry. Grinnell Glacier is disappearing — fast.
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Bill Gates will invest as much as $2 billion in new clean energy partnership

On Monday, Bill Gates will announce one of the largest clean-energy partnerships in history, according to a new report in ClimateWire. The partnership will be focused on researching and deploying new sources of carbon-free energy, funded by billions of dollars from Gates and other philanthropists. At the same time, a coalition of nations including the United States and India have agreed to double their research and development funding for clean energy research.
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Russia 'playing with fire', warns Turkey, as Moscow imposes visa regime

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan steps up the war of word after Russia’s latest retaliatory measures in the wake of the downing of its fighter jet
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Russia unveils body armour for DOGS after death of police dog in Paris

A Russian defence company has released a new design of body armour to keep terror-sniffing police dogs safe in the wake of the death of French police dog Diesel, who died during a police raid in Paris following the Friday 13th terror attacks. In a new video Russian dog handler demonstrated the new design in a new video showing off the transformation from man's best friend to professionally protected police hound.
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HSBC whistleblower given five years’ jail over biggest leak in banking history

The whistleblower who exposed wrongdoing at HSBC’s Swiss private bank has been sentenced to five years in prison by a Swiss court. Hervé Falciani, a former IT worker, was convicted in his absence for the biggest leak in banking history. He is currently living in France, where he sought refuge from Swiss justice, and did not attend the trial. The leak of secret bank account details formed the basis of revelations – by the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde and other media outlets...
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How Long Can Florida's Citrus Industry Survive?

The USDA recently stunned growers when it projected the smallest orange harvest for Florida in more than 50 years. The culprit: A tiny insect that's killing off the state's trees — and industry.
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Saudi Arabia just promised to sue anyone who compares their justice system to Isis

Saudi Arabia will sue any Twitter user who compares the Kingdom’s recent decision to execute a poet to punishments handed down by Isis. Ashraf Fayadh, a 35-year-old Palestinian poet, was sentenced to death for apostasy – renouncing one’s faith – by a court in Abha on 17 November, according to documents seen by Human Rights Watch.
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Homeless veteran, beaten by teens on camera in Olney, dies

Watch the video Homeless veteran, beaten by teens on camera in Olney, dies on Yahoo News . Surveillance video shows 51-year-old Robert Barnes being pummeled by teens with a hammer, a piece of wood and punches, after police say a 10-year-old boy told his mother he got into an argument with Barnes.
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WTO Ruling on Dolphin-Safe Tuna Labeling Illustrates Supremacy of Trade Agreements

International trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership need to be carefully examined piece by piece because they can take precedence over a country's own laws.
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NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

The U.S. National Security Agency will end its daily vacuuming of millions of Americans' phone records by Sunday and replace the practice with more tightly targeted surveillance methods, the Obama administration said on Friday. As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.
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Paris climate activists put under house arrest using emergency laws

French police arrest activists for flouting ban on organising protests during climate talks next week
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In Brazil, Deforestation Is Up, And So Is The Risk Of Tree Extinction

Brazil's Environment Ministry announced that deforestation in the country has increased by 16 percent. A separate study warned that more than half the Amazon's tree species may be threatened.
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Canada to give UN $75 million for Syrian refugee relief

Canada’s Liberal government announced on Thursday a US$75 million (CA$100 million) contribution to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to help fleeing Syrians, fulfilling a campaign promise from its recent federal election. The contribution includes US$7.5 million (CA$10 million) for the U.N. refugee agency as part of the program to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees in Canada over the next few months.
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