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The XIII Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is ratified. Hereditary chattel slavery is outlawed throughout the country.

Campaigners have called for the UK's only giant pandas to be given "political asylum" over fears they will be put down if they go back to China. Yang Guang and Tian Tian have been unable to breed at Edinburgh Zoo since their arrival in 2011 - sparking fears among activists that they will be seen as "useless" following the end of their decade-long, £600,000-a-year lease deal. The pair have been in the zoo for 10 years and came to Scotland to be part of a breeding program....

On November 19, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in the shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz in Kenosha, WI. His defense established that the teenager was acting in self-defense; the prosecution was unable to prove otherwise. Even media outlets not aligned with the conservative view were constrained to observe that among the “undisputed facts” of the case are that Rosenbaum chased and later advanced on Rittenhouse when he stood his ground; that Huber hit him with a skateboard and lunged for his rifle; and that Grosskreutz pointed a handgun at him. Yet, the young man...

It’s not about the variant -- it’s about the fear. Like a magician who gains his reputation for sleight-of-hand -- getting the audience to concentrate on one aspect of a trick while manipulating another -- so government authorities around the world are using the unknown aspects of a new COVID-19 variant to keep the public in fear about their future well-being. This chronic fear under the guise of an “emergency” has granted unbelievable amounts of power to those who the media anoint as “experts” and “scientists.” They are milking their new-found fame and perceived wisdom to make pronouncements and exercise...

Donald Trump brokered a deal this weekend to clear the North Carolina GOP Senate field for Rep. Ted Budd, the candidate he endorsed in June but who has failed to emerge so far as the clear frontrunner. During a meeting at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Trump pledged to endorse former GOP Rep. Mark Walker, who is currently in third place in the Senate primary, if Walker leaves the race and runs again for the House instead, according to multiple sources present at the gathering. “Trump offered Walker the endorsement, and it’s expected to get rolled out this week,” said Jack Minor,...

Women's sports are again under attack. Decades ago, it was due to tradition and patriarchy, with funding and attention lavished primarily on men’s sports. Title IX came in 1972, leveling the playing field. At the time, there were just over 300,000 women and girls participating in high school and college sports. Female athletes only received 2 percent of college athletic budgets and few if any women received athletic scholarships. Forty years later in 2012, great progress was made with 3 million girls participating in high school sports and 190,000 in college sports, a sixfold increase since 1972. But instead of...

DENVER (AP) — It was lunchtime on a mild day in the sprawling Denver suburb of Aurora when a truck full of teens pulled into a high school parking lot where students were gathered, and gunfire rang out. Three were wounded as others ran in fear. One of the boys charged in the Nov. 19 shooting later told investigators he brought his armed friends to an expected gang fight because “it’s the way it is in this town,” court documents said... ...Aurora has seen an increase in Black and Latino families and immigrants from around the world as Denver has...

Progress of Reproducing the Mizuno’s Experiment in QiuRan Lab Hang Zhang and Si Chen Email: 715469127@qq.com The objective of this study was to independently reproduce Mizuno’s experiment. We replicated the D2(H2)-Pd(Ni) reaction system reported in the literature[1]. On the other hand, we developed a different calorimetric system employing two calorimeters to measure the heat generated by the reaction system. One is a Seebeck calorimeter and the other is based on the hydrothermal temperature difference. We improved the reliability of the Seebeck so that it achieves 0.1W accuracy consistently. We operated the D2(H2)-Pd(Ni) reaction system at different conditions. The following...

BORIS Johnson will unleash an all-out war on drugs this week in a massive drive to clean up Britain’s crime-plagued streets. The PM is targeting dealers, addicts and casual users who he believes are the root cause of half of all burglaries and violent robberies.... ...In an exclusive interview with The Sun on Sunday, Mr Johnson says politicians have dithered over the scourge for too long — sometimes because they once dabbled in drugs themselves... ...The country is ­littered with victims of what’s happened. We are going to look at new ways of penalising them. "Things that will actually interfere...

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was slammed by Republicans and business leaders following an interview where she cast doubt on whether rampant smash-and-grabs are actually occurring. "A lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not actually panning out," Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The Washington Times last week. "I believe it’s a Walgreens in California cited it, but the data didn’t back it up," she added.... ...The comments sparked pushback from retail leaders and Republican lawmakers, including from Walgreens. ... ...Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks said Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were "tone-deaf and offensive" to the family of Oakland...

Mauritania, an impoverished, sparsely populated desert country in North-West Africa has the highest proportion of hereditary slavery of any country in the world.1 Out of 4.75 million citizens, Global Slavery Index estimates the number living in hereditary slavery in the country to be 90,000 people.2 In practice, this is descent-based, chattel slavery that treats human beings as property, with violent enforcement. Modern slavery or “slave-like conditions” prevail for up to 500,000 more.3 Slavery in Mauritania is also a racial slavery.4 In a country that has a largely destitute population, Mauritania’s Arabic-speaking Arab-Berber elite, an exclusionary and predatory group that self-identifies...

A brutal mob killing of a Sri Lankan man accused of blasphemy in Pakistan has sparked protests in both countries, with Pakistan's leader condemning the vigilante violence. Priyantha Diyawadanage, 48, a factory manager in the city of Sialkot, was beaten to death on Friday and his body set alight. More than 100 people have been arrested so far, said Pakistan PM Imran Khan. He has described the incident as a "day of shame" for his country. The victim's family in Sri Lanka have told the BBC they are in despair. His wife, Nilushi Dissanayaka, called on both Pakistan and Sri...

NYC's bagel cafes are making pleas for cream cheese amidst a growing supply chain shortage, with many just days away from running out of the classic spread From Zabar's to Pick-a-Bagel, bagel makers citywide say they barely have a few days' supply left, threatening to take a NYC delicacy off the menu indefinitely Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side currently has enough cream cheese to last them until Thursday Nick Patta of Absolute Bagels said that his Queens-based cream cheese supplier had run out of cream cheese for the first time that in over a decade New York bagel...

China is attempting to woo Equatorial Guinea into allowing them to build a military base off their coast, according to a report - a move which would give Beijing a foothold in the Atlantic, and deeply worry Washington.... ...Were China to convert the Bata port into a military base, it would enable Beijing to repair and rearm their warships and other naval equipment in the same waters in which the US Eastern Seaboard sits. ....U.S. government lawyers accused the president's son - whose Instagram account shows him meeting world leaders such as the Pope and Israel's prime minister; playing polo,...

Imani Oakley's campaign was duped into almost planning a fundraiser with a nonexistent rabbi. A lefty New Jersey Democrat learned the hard way that not all rabbis are kosher. The campaign of Imani Oakley, a 31-year-old progressive activist running for Congress in Newark, thought it was in negotiations to organize a fundraiser with like-minded Linda Goldstein — the “chief rabbi” of Gaza — but instead were chatting up a Big Apple lawyer running a parody Twitter account. On the bizarre parody account, Rabbi Linda Goldstein warns Hamas fighters to practice social distancing in terror tunnels; posts photos of herself posing...

The Chancellor of the State University of New York is facing calls to resign over his decision to ridicule one of former governor Andrew Cuomo's sex accusers. James Malatras has been urged to step down from his $450,000-a-year post at Albany headquartered-SUNY after a probe revealed he'd written 'Let's release some of her cray emails,' of Lindsey Boylan..Last week, Boylan slammed a female Cuomo staffer turned Facebook exec, Dani Leverm for trying to 'destroy' her by telling the then-governor's team to 'victim shame her on the record' by releasing her personal file. Boylan tweeted out a defiant message as more...

ICYMI, here’s a chart from a recent post by my good friend Mathew Crawford. It basically shows, the more you vaccinate, the more cases and deaths you get.Critics would argue, “it’s confounded! more elderly are vaccinated.” But the same critics cannot show us this is false. They can only do “hand-waving” arguments that it must be wrong. Not very convincing.But to be fair, we can’t cite this as definitive proof either that the vaccines are unsafe.Governments won’t release the data to show vaccinations are safe. I wonder why?We actually agree with the critics that it is confounded but here’s why:...

A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water, first appearing during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the movement of tectonic plates. The San Pedro Martir mangrove forest was once on the shores of a vast ocean where the temperature was much warmer, but is now situated more than 170 kilometres inland due to climatic changes in sea levels. The forest offers a snapshot of the ancient past, allowing scientists to understand how environments adapted to changing sea levels as the global climate changed... In...

December 6th, 2021 Mikołajki / Feast of St. Nicholas St. Nicholas Church, Kościół Mikołaja, Lubliniec, Poland Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet First readingIsaiah 35:1-10 ©The return of the redeemed through the desertLet the wilderness and the dry-lands exult,let the wasteland rejoice and bloom,let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil,let it rejoice and sing for joy.The glory of Lebanon is bestowed on it,the splendour of Carmel and Sharon;they shall see the glory of the Lord,the splendour of our God.Strengthen all weary hands,steady all trembling kneesand say to all faint hearts,‘Courage! Do not be afraid.‘Look, your God is coming,vengeance is coming,the...