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Teams of employees at Twitter who were responsible for monitoring the upcoming midterm elections on the platform have been decimated as part of mass layoffs implemented today by new owner Elon Musk. Those that remain say they do not have access to critical tools used for certain content moderation decisions, sources in a position to know told Forbes. As part of his takeover of Twitter, Musk dramatically slashed the company’s workforce on Friday, just days before the 2022 midterm elections. Employees were told Thursday night that they would receive notice the next morning stating whether they were still employed. Multiple...

If I was a dog

Brazil is facing a 'biological Fukushima' and is seeing lethal new Covid variants every week that could threaten to destabilise the world, one of the country's leading health experts has warned. The country's P1 variant - believed to be 150 times more contagious than the original Covid-19 virus - is of the most concern. It can reinfect those who had the first strain, and has killed thousands of people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. The variant has infected hundreds in Canada, including players in professional ice hockey team the Vancouver Canucks, and has been recorded in 27 people in...

The plan was simple: Connect the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge via a freeway. It was the 1950s and everyone loved freeways. What could go wrong? Nearly everything. The Embarcadero Freeway is widely considered one of the biggest mistakes the city ever made. For 32 years, a concrete monstrosity barricaded San Franciscans from the bay waters, shrouded the iconic Ferry Building in smog and made lots of residents very mad. Photographs of it now look like a very different, unsightly city. And while (nearly) everyone hated it, it took an earthquake to tear it down. Here's the story...

Many, probably most, Texans hadn’t heard of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas until this week. Then a historic winter storm froze up the place and “electric reliability” turned into an unfunny joke for far too many. Their electricity was reliably unavailable. Texans are getting to know the 50-year-old council and are not liking what they’re learning. For one thing, about a third of its members don’t even live in Texas. Well, now that the glare has turned on ERCOT, it has removed the board members’ names from its website. They’re gone. They were all there earlier in the week....

EXCLUSIVE: Constitutional Attorney Says Pence, Congress, Violated Constitution, Trump Can Use EAS To Circumvent Censorship "There is an insurrection going on inside of the entire government, funded, supported and fomented by foreign actors," said Attorney Ivan Raiklin. Speaking exclusively with National File on January 7, Constitutional Attorney Ivan Raiklin explained that President Donald Trump’s “only option” to defend the Constitution is to “activate the Emergency Alert System.” This comes as Big Tech companies have banned President Trump and many of his supporters from using their platforms just days after Congress certified the fraudulent Electoral College results on January 6. He...

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- An attempt to fight racism at a community college may have backfired. A group of employees at South Puget Sound Community College sent out an invitation to all 300 staffers. The "Staff, Faculty and Administrators of Color" encouraged employees to reply to the invitation to find out the confidential date and time of what was being called a "happy hour" to "build support and community" for people of color. The invite made it clear white people were not invited. The email read: "If you want to create space for white folks to meet and work on racism,...

An “Occupy Cleveland” protester tells police she was raped in her tent over the weekend.

This site is broken when people like me are blocked for stating the obvious. What is the obvious? ask me privately because the "free" "republic" will keep us from discussin it in the "forum"

Rush Limbaugh sold his condo in NYC last year...

Mums help chicks if dad was ugly 29 September 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Evolution holds hope for ugly males. Females appear to invest extra energy in getting their poorer-quality offspring off to a good start, at least among house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus). Female birds can deposit different amounts of health-promoting compounds in their eggs, depending on social and environmental conditions. Previous studies on zebra finches showed that females were more likely to invest in eggs fertilised by high-quality males. Kristen Navara, now at Ohio State University in Columbus, expected to see the same pattern with house finches, in...

Poland on Thursday committed 1,000 new troops for NatoÂ’s force in Afghanistan, after a formal meeting of the alliance on Wednesday failed to meet an urgent military request for hundreds of extra soldiers. The Polish troops will join the 100 already on the ground in Afghanistan but are unlikely to arrive until February 2007. The push for reinforcements put the spotlight on NatoÂ’s struggle to help establish a stable government in Afghanistan and on its long-term prospects as a military alliance. At an emergency meeting on Wednesday, NatoÂ’s 26 member countries came up with no commitments for any new soldiers...

Nationalist camp leaders warn that the right-wing had better not make the same mistake twice. "This time," they declare, "we have to say, 'We told you so.'" Nationalist camp commentator and journalist Haggai Segal and the Rabbi of Ofrah, Avi Gisser, are the first to send out the message. Segal, broadcasting on his Knesset Channel TV show and writing in his weekly column in B'Sheva, says the right-wing must not be as modest as it was when the PA broke out the Oslo War in late 2000. "The right-wing at the time," Segal writes in B'Sheva, "criminally decreed upon itself...

The band known as "The Right Brothers" sing how President George W. Bush is right on all of the decisions that he has made. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq WAS DEAD WRONG!

Was fig first fruit of man's agricultural endeavours? By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 02/06/2006) The dawn of agriculture may have come with the domestication of fig trees near Jericho some 11,400 years ago, archaeologists report today. The discovery of ancient carbonised figs suggests that fruit, rather than grains that are traditionally thought to have heralded agriculture, may yield the earliest evidence of purposeful planting. The figs date back roughly 1,000 years before wheat, barley and legumes were domesticated in the region, making the fruit trees the oldest known domesticated crop, a team reports today in the journal Science. Nine...

Bird flu swan was from outside UK AREA ON ALERT * Poultry owners within wild bird risk area must keep birds indoors or, if not possible, ensure they are kept away from wild birds * Bird transport within 6 mile (10km) surveillance zone will be curbed * Poultry within 1.8 mile (3km) protection zone must be kept indoors and will be tested A dead swan found in Fife which tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was a whooper swan, DNA tests by government scientists have found. The breed originates from outside the UK but it was...

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Paul Kuschel would have been better off naked _ like many of the folks at Sunnier Palms Nudist Park. Instead, he was wearing a pair of nylon shorts Sunday when a generator he was working on backfired and sprayed him with starter fluid, setting him ablaze. "I would have been better off wearing nothing on at all," Kuschel told Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. The fire seared his shorts to his backside. "It's a good thing I wasn't wearing a shirt," he said. Kuschel, 43, suffered second-degree and third-degree burns. He was taken to a hospital with...

January Was America's Warmest on Record Wednesday February 8, 2006 12:16 AM By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AP Science Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Recording the warmest January on record allowed Americans to save on their heating, but like all good things, last month's mildness seems to have been too good to last. The country's average temperature for the month was 39.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 8.5 degrees above average for January, the National Climatic Data Center said Tuesday. The old record for January warmth was 37.3 degrees set in 1953. On the other hand, while much of the United States was basking in...

It's not just you: yesterday really was depressing By Catriona Davies (Filed: 24/01/2006) If you woke up yesterday feeling gloomy and found that, from then on, things got worse, there may be an explanation. According to one academic's calculations, yesterday was the most depressing day of the year. Cliff Arnall, a psychologist at Cardiff University who devised the formula, blamed a combination of debts, failed New Year's resolutions, the cold, grey weather and the length of time since Christmas. "For most people, there's a realisation by the third week of January that spending on sales items needs to be stopped...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Anthony Sheppard shocked his mother this week with a telephone call, a day after he was reported dead. "When he called me I thought I was talking to a ghost," said Verna McCowan. Oakland police on Tuesday bungled the identification of a man shot to death after finding Sheppard's identification card on the victim. Authorities alerted his mother of the shooting, and released the details to reporters. Sheppard, 23, said he was shocked when he walked up to a group of friends on Wednesday who were crying while reading a newspaper account of his death. The dead...