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Homeless encampments in Austin, Texas, were legalized in 2021, but the people of this fast-growing tech mecca have had second and third thoughts about what looked like a good idea on paper but turned out to be an eyesore under bridges. Austin politicos have just finished removing virtually all remaining visible homeless camps. Other cities are taking notice. The journey to this current outcome was far from a straight path. Put bluntly, it was a dizzying display of waffling “wokeness.” In 2019, the city council of Austin had the bright idea to legalize homeless camps. Unfortunately, they took the vote...

NEW YORK — A century ago, the publisher of the New York Times scolded an attorney for the newspaper who had just settled a libel lawsuit that had looked as though it would be hard for the paper to win. “I would never settle a libel lawsuit to save a little money,” Adolph Ochs wrote in a letter to the lawyer. “If we have damaged a person we are prepared to pay all he can get the final court to award.” That sensibility has guided the newspaper ever since, with the Times generally refusing to settle libel lawsuits for money...

resident Biden ignited a political firestorm last month when he announced that he would fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stephen Breyer’s resignation with a Black woman. This was reportedly the result of a deal (political quid pro quo) that candidate Biden struck with Representative James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) in return for delivering the Black vote in the South Carolina primary. resident Biden did a huge disservice to both the integrity of the selection process in nominating justices to the high court and to the candidate that is ultimately chosen. The fact that Biden would enter into such...

Welcome to The Bicycle Thread. A monthly PING List for bicycle enthusiasts to share experiences, information and ideas.

MOSCOW, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Russia and China on Friday called in a joint statement for NATO to halt its expansion, while Moscow said it fully supported Beijing's stance on Taiwan and opposed Taiwanese independence in any form.

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) Russia's Gazprom has agreed a 30-year contract to supply China's CNPC with natural gas from a new pipeline connecting Russia's Far East with China's northeast..... The first gas will start flowing in two to three years, with volumes building up to 10 billion cubic meters a year around 2026, said the person, who declined to be named due to company policy. The deal will be settled in euros, the person added

New series on Amazon.

Rock 'n’ roll was still in its infancy when it suffered its first tragedy. On Feb. 3, 1959, three of its biggest stars — Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, known as the Big Bopper — were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The three acts, along with Dion and the Belmonts, were on a package tour called the Winter Dance Party, which was to play 24 Midwestern cities in as many days. But the bus’ heating system was ill-equipped and broke down a few days later, which caused some musicians to catch the flu and...

State officials on Thursday said its unlikely that prosecutors will be able to obtain a warrant to carry out death row inmate Zane Floyd’s execution before Nevada’s supply of one of the lethal injection drugs expires. “It’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely,” Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Alexander Chen said during a hearing in U.S. District Court. Floyd, who was sentenced to die for fatally shooting four people and gravely wounding another at a Las Vegas grocery store more than two decades ago, has multiple appeals in front of the Nevada Supreme Court. The high court would have to...

Iran has executed two gay men who were convicted on charges of sodomy and spent six years on death row, a rights group reported. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, which is considered one of the most repressive places in the world for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. According to a report on Sunday by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the two men were identified as Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi. They were sentenced to death for "forced sexual intercourse between two men" and hanged in a prison in the northwestern city of Maragheh, some 310 miles from the...

FOX News reports, At a virtual press conference Monday evening, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly stressed that there have been no riots or injuries linked to the demonstrations of anti-jab-mandate protests ushered into the capital by a "Freedom Convoy" of truckers

My latest song. I hate snow.

FDA Suddenly Removes Data on Moderna Vaccine Approval Which Showed 2.6x Heart Inflammation

💙💛A Mother's love is the same all over the💙💛 world. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1152485378424341/user/100009138555706 Віктор Дзікович Дай Боже на землі миру!І God grant peace on earth! Миру, здоров'я і щастя усім людям. 8 Peace, health and happiness to all people.

Iran's nuclear program is on the verge of producing enough fuel for a nuclear bomb in just a matter of weeks and could have a device built in less than a year, US officials estimate. Iran's 'breakout time' - the time it would take to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon - has advanced greatly after Donald Trump withdrew the US from a deal with the country in 2018, officials claim. The breakout time is different from the time it would take Iran to build a nuclear weapon. Western officials believe Iran hasn't quite figured out how to...

The first demonstrators arrived in Quebec at the beginning of the evening Thursday but the police did not tolerate any overflow. Leaving Stoneham after a break in the afternoon, the convoy managed to reach the upper town but the authorities did not even allow the vehicles to park on Rene-Levesque Boulevard. The Quebec patrol officers have a short fuse and negotiation seems impossible. They are also more numerous than the protesters. The protest, however, is expected to culminate on Saturday...

“Attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law” (Proverbs 4:1-2 KJV).

So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace. Naturally, the left hates it. ... A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class...

Feb. 1, 2022 -- While studies indicate the Omicron subvariant spreads more easily than the highly transmissible original Omicron variant, there’s no evidence the subvariant makes people any sicker, a World Health Organization official said, according to CNBC.Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead, said Tuesday at a news conference that both the Omicron variant, labeled BA.1 and the subvariant, BA.2, cause less severe illness than the Delta variant.But there’s no indication the subvariant causes more severe illness than the original Omicron, she said. Vaccines protect people from illness and death from both the variant and the subvariant, she said.“We need...