The European Union Times |
- Brussels on Lockdown, Belgium Warns of “Imminent Threat”
- Obama administration uses gays in international political games
- Number of homeless rises in America to more than half a million, especially in New York
- Kepler-438b planet loses atmosphere to aggressive parent star
- Rand Paul Wants To Cut Off Arms Sales To Saudis Until They Take In Refugees
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Posted: 21 Nov 2015 05:07 AM PST
 The government of Belgium has imposed its highest terror alert level on the capital. It now stands at 4, signifying a “very serious threat for the Brussels region.” According to the Crisis Center of the Belgian Interior Ministry, Brussels faces a “serious and imminent threat that requires taking specific security measures as well as specific recommendations for the population.” It has told citizens to avoid concerts, sporting events, airports, train stations and other places where large crowds gather. The announcement translates into a virtual lock down of a city with a population of over 1.8 million. The Interior Ministry also told citizens to comply with security checks. Source           |
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Posted: 21 Nov 2015 04:32 AM PST
 Officials at the US Embassy in Moscow responded to an article in a Russian publication about attempts to discredit several senior Russian officials. The response was made in the form of “correction of errors” – diplomats tried to arrange a “lesson of literacy.” The Izvestia newspaper has recently published an article about how someone was trying to discredit Russian officials and entrepreneurs by throwing shadow on their sexual orientation. “The first violin” was given to Russia’s LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseyev. “At the end of May 2015, Russian LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseyev stated on “Echo of Moscow” radio station that first deputy head of the presidential administration Vyacheslav Volodin, Sberbank chief German Gref and the head of Sheremetyevo Airport Mikhail Vasilenko were supposedly homosexuals. At the same time, GayRussia website, which Alexeev controls, published an article devoted to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. The article quoted one of Rogozin’s tweets, in which he wrote that “the West will collapse under the “pressure of the Islamic State and gays”,” said the publication. Making reference to the correspondence between US officials and Alekseyev, the Izvestia concluded that it was a targeted campaign to discredit the Russian officials. “For now your main target will be first deputy of government,” the Russian paper claimed the letter said. “However, your main line of work, as we see it, will be to provoke [the deputy into] too overly emotional reaction to [mentions] of the LGBT-community in Russia,” the newspaper cited one of such letters. The publication also said that the correspondence was exposed to the public as a result of a hacker attack. One way or another, American diplomats in Moscow considered it their duty to respond to the publication. One can only speculate why US officials decided to analyze the letter to Alekseyev written by U.S. Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons, Randy Berry. The analysis revealed numerous grammar mistakes. In addition, a US State Department official can not have an email account on gmail. Finally, one should have written “LGBTI Persons” instead of “LGBT Persons.” The last detail is worth paying special attention to. The website of the State Department indicates Berry’s position as “LGBTI Persons.” However, the magazine that the State Department supports uses “LGBT” abbreviation in an interview with Randy Berry himself. One shall assume that this is an interchangeable term then. Noteworthy, the magazine is dated from June 2015, but the messages that US embassy officials “exposed” is dated from May 11 of the same year. The Russian Facebook community praised the “revelations” from the US embassy. “For some reason, no one has recollected the scandal that occurred to Michael McFaul and Ryan Christopher Fogle, third secretary of the political department of the US embassy in Moscow, who, as we remember, invited to contact him via gmail service. No one asked us, for example, how much time it took Senator McCain to send his famous appeal to Vladimir Putin to Pravda.Ru, and why he needed that time… He needed the time to correct spelling errors,” Chairman of Pravda.Ru Board of Directors, Vadim Gorshenin said. As a matter of fact, US embassy officials know perfectly well that many Americans, just like Russians, make many spelling and vocabulary errors as they write. A brief visit to any blog is enough to see how people break all laws of philology. In this particular letter, in which embassy employees found so many errors, they corrected even the expressions that Obama’s envoy uses in his articles and interviews. Interestingly, American editors do not correct anything in his statements, nor do they try to make jokes about his literacy. It just so happened that diplomats decided to make fun of a high-ranking official, who was protecting the rights of sexual minorities in the whole world on behalf of the White House. There are two assumptions to explain why. First of all, the US Embassy in Moscow is staffed with homophobes, and the White House administration should teach them a lesson of political correctness. Secondly, one may assume that embassy officials are playing into the hands of Republicans as the head of the White House is going to step down soon. They may want to show that Obama was hiring illiterate and incompetent officials. It is an open secret that the American administration led by Barack Obama stands up for the rights of gay individuals. Noteworthy, the position of the special envoy at the State Department appeared not that long ago, with full support from the sitting head of the White House. As for the rights, here is a quote (translated from Russian) from the letter, which embassy officials referred to as a fake one: “The US State Department appreciates your contribution to the organization of the rally “for the termination of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and for the restoration of friendly relations with Western countries on May 1, 2015.” It is worth noting that successive actions of LGBT activists during the demonstration led to extensive media coverage of the event, as well as to negative reactions from Russian officials, which is a clear sign of excellent preparation and qualifications of protesters.” In other words, a chance to be beaten up and wake up at a police station is a sign “the excellent preparation and qualification.” Simply put, the “defender of the rights of gays and lesbians” does not mind the “defendants” to be beaten up by police batons. Sounds like a very original way to interpret the rights of LGBT(I) community. Against such a background, American gays and lesbians may wish to ask quite a few questions to the White House. For example, does the Obama administration use gays and lesbians in its international political games? Why, for example, provoke clashes between Russian homosexuals and law enforcement agencies, forcing them to engage in illegal actions for financial rewards? President Putin, as we remember, has repeatedly stated that he did not want to look into either hetero or homosexual bedrooms. As a country of traditional values and conventional family arrangements, the Russian law bans the propaganda of sexual preferences. By “exposing” these or those Russian officials with the help of Russian agents provocateurs, the US special envoy for the rights of sexual minorities is trying to develop a homophobic background in Russia. What for? One may assume that political provocateurs such Aleksei Navalny have long turned into public clowns and are ineffective. Therefore, one should unearth other figures, such as Alekseyev, who could be used for the purpose of arranging sex scandals. The goal of all that is clear: to sow instability in Russia at all costs. Source      |
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Posted: 21 Nov 2015 04:05 AM PST
 About 565,000 people were homeless in the United States, according to a one-night federal survey. While this is a two percent drop from 2014, major cities like New York, Seattle and Los Angeles continue to battle rising homelessness. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress found that of the 565,000 homeless counted during a point-in-time survey conducted in January, a quarter of them were children below the age of 18. The total number of homeless represented a two percent decrease from 2014, and an 11 percent drop from 2007. Point-in-time counts consider those sleeping in shelters, in subsidized transitional housing, or on the streets. Advocates say, though, that there are likely many more who are homeless but aren’t accessible to the department’s survey, such as those sleeping on a friend’s couch. Furthermore, advocates aren’t impressed with a slight decline in national numbers given the ongoing, if not worsening, homeless crisis in large urban areas of the US. They say a sluggish recovery from the Great Recession, along with rising housing costs, stagnant or falling wages, and a political contempt for social welfare programs are reasons for high homeless rates in cities. “I am glad it’s trending downward, but a 2 percent change (nationally) is pretty much flat,” Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness told Reuters. “We are 7 million units short of affordable housing for low-income people – that’s a big gap,” Roman added. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that the city would build 15,000 new units designed for the homeless and mentally ill over the next 15 years. The city acted without its traditional partner, the state of New York, signaling that it could not wait for the stalled negotiations with the governor’s office over a new long-term housing agreement. The city has about 60,000 homeless living in shelters and on the streets, according to Capital New York. “Despite national estimates, New York City continues to experience near record homelessness,” Giselle Routhier, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for the Homeless, told Reuters. On Thursday, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray toured one of two homeless camps that are set to open soon on city property to address a 22 percent increase in homelessness, The Stranger reported. The city council approved three encampments earlier this year, responding to the nearly 4,000 homeless in Seattle, according to KUOW. This month, Murray and the local county executive declared a state of emergency regarding homelessness. Los Angeles, California, leads the nation in chronically homeless, with 12,536 individuals, a 55 percent increase since 2013. More than one-third of the chronically homeless in the US live in California, HUD said. HUD’s report found that 17 states, including New York and California, saw increases in homelessness this year, while 33 states and the District of Columbia had declines. Florida, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, and New Jersey had the biggest drops. About 1.49 million people across the US used a homeless shelter in 2014, a 4.6 percent rise from 2013, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spokeswoman Heather Fluit. HUD said that there has been a 26 percent decrease in the unsheltered homeless population nationally since 2010, coinciding with President Barack Obama’s Opening Doors initiative to prevent and end homelessness. Since 2010, HUD said veteran homelessness has declined by 36 percent, family homelessness went down by 19 percent, and chronic homelessness decreased 22 percent. “The Obama Administration has made an historic commitment to effectively end homelessness in this nation,” said HUD Secretary Julian Castro. “Together with our partners across the federal government and communities from coast to coast, we have made tremendous progress toward our ambitious goals. But our work is far from finished. We have to continue making smart investments in the strategies that work so that everyone has a place to call home.” Source      |
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Posted: 21 Nov 2015 03:53 AM PST
 In this artistic rendering, the planet Kepler-438b is shown in front of its violent parent star as it is being regularly irradiated by huge flares, which renders the planet uninhabitable. (University of Warwick)The Earth’s magnetic field shields it from the most aggressive radiation emitted from the Sun and its right distance from its parent keeps it safe from boiling – like Mercury and Venus. But it seems that Kepler-438b neither has a strong magnetic field nor it is in the right distance from the parent to stay safe from its violent and dangerous radiation. “Unlike the Earth’s relatively quiet sun, Kepler-438 emits strong flares every few hundred days, each one stronger than the most powerful recorded flare on the Sun. It is likely that these flares are associated with coronal mass ejections, which could have serious damaging effects on the habitability of the planet,” said David Armstrong of the University of Warwick’s Astrophysics Group and the lead author of the study, adding that the superflares are almost 10 times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun and equivalent to the same energy as 100 billion megatons of TNT. However, the coronal mass ejection (CME), which occurs when a star hurls huge amount of plasma outwards, has a much more devastating role in eliminating a planet’s atmosphere than the superflare itself. “The likelihood of a coronal mass ejection occurring increases with the occurrence of powerful flares, and large coronal mass ejections have the potential to strip away any atmosphere that a close-in planet like Kepler-438b might have, rendering it uninhabitable,” Armstrong added. When atmosphere diminishes, the planet will be subject to harsh Ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from superflares, along with charged particle radiation, all of which are harmful to life. Source      |
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Posted: 21 Nov 2015 03:43 AM PST
 GOP Presidential candidate Rand Paul made some bold statements in an interview Wednesday, noting that until other Middle Eastern countries address their role in the refugee crisis, the US should not be selling arms to them. When asked what should be done to help the innocent people fleeing terrorism in Syria and Iraq, Paul called out the neighboring states that have yet to take in a single refugee. “One of the biggest supporters of Sunni terrorism in the world is Saudi Arabia, Qatar is up there, UAE is up there.” Paul noted “Sometimes government, sometimes private donors. What I would say is no more sales of any arms to these countries until they start accepting refugees.” the Senator urged. “The Gulf states have poured gasoline on this fire, they have not taken a refugee. Iran has not taken in refugees and they’ve been an arsonist in this situation as well.” Paul told Fox News viewers. “So those who live there need to step up and we need to say we’re not going to sell arms to you anymore if you’re not willing to do your fair share.” the Senator concluded. Paul has introduced legislation to restrict benefits to refugees coming into the US. The Senator explained that refugees currently entering are immediately entered into the welfare system, where as disabled veterans and unemployed Americans are already struggling to make ends meet. “You don’t have the right to be an American citizen. Most people don’t realize this but refugees come here and immediately are put on welfare.” Paul stated, adding that “there are whole agencies set up to put them in government housing, government cash assistance and they’re basically put into our welfare programs…” The Senator also commented on calls made by intelligence heads for expanded surveillance powers in the wake of both the refugee influx and increased terrorism in Europe. “There will always be those who advocate giving up your liberty in exchange for somehow getting more security, but what we’ve found when we’ve allowed warrantless searches… we didn’t catch any terrorists.” Paul noted that France has a surveillance program that “invades privacy a thousand times more (than the US program) without restraints, and they didn’t stop this (Paris attack). The Senator said that if we give up all our liberty in the face of terror threats then “what are we fighting for? What differentiates us from them?” Source     |
