Nayid Bukele, who became El Salvador’s president last 1 June, marched into the chambers of the nation’s Congress on 9 February flanked by gun-toting troops and invoked an obscure constitutional measure allowing him to declare an emergency session of the legislature. The emergency: he wants the Congress to approve his requested $109 billion outlay for...
Tag: Feb182020
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PLASTIC ROADS
One way to get rid of waste plastic is to make roads out of it. Most asphalt road pavement is about 95 percent sand and gravel; only about 5 percent is bitumen, the sticky black stuff that holds everything together. MacRebur, a Scottish company, has found a way to grind up old plastic bottles and...
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AI LISTENS FOR EARLY SIGNS OF MENTAL ILLNESS
by Bennett Daviss More than one in ten people worldwide are afflicted with a mental illness, yet often the signs are too subtle to detect until the illness is on full display. But those signs aren’t too subtle for artificial intelligence. At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, scientists created machine learning software to analyze a person’s...
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PROTEIN CAN TURN OFF INFLAMMATION AND AGING
by Bennett Daviss Increasingly, scientists are viewing aging as a condition that can be slowed or perhaps even reversed. The newest evidence comes from the University of California at Berkeley, where scientists have identified a family of proteins that control much of the process. Medical research has found inflammation to be the root cause of...
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DUOPOLY SMASHED IN IRELAND
After years of growing anger over austerity programs, which have hit the middle and lower classes of Ireland, voters shocked the political establishment on 8 February. In a stunning upset, the Sinn Féin party, known mostly as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, received more first-choice votes in the Irish general election than...
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PHILIPPINES TO U.S: “GET OUT”
A military alliance between the United States and the Philippines called the “Visiting forces (Agreement) Act,” signed in 1999, and the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which called for the U.S. to use military force to defend the Philippines from external attack, may soon end. On 11 February, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. tweeted: “The...
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INDIA: MODI REBUKED
As reported in the Trends Journal, the ongoing country-wide street protests against President Narendra Modi’s anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act has been growing despite thousands risking injury, arrests, and, in some cases death from aggressive police tactics. In addition to anger over the anti-Muslim amendment, the millions of citizens who have taken to the streets are...
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YEMEN: SAUDIS SLAUGHTER CIVILIANS
Virtually blacked out of American and western news media is the ongoing Saudi Arabian slaughter and destruction of Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, which began in March 2015. The United States has fully supported the Saudi war effort in Yemen by supplying weapons (along with the UK and France), intelligence, and commandos...
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IRAQ: “WE WILL DRAW CLOSER… AND SURPRISE THEM”
Last Saturday, Sheikh Akram Al-Kaabi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi al-Nujaba militia group, said they would seek revenge for President Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and the nine others killed in the drone attack, including the deputy chairman of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. “Our response to the U.S. will not be only a...
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SYRIA: REGIME CHANGE MASSACRE
Last October, President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops in the northwest section of Syria, setting the stage for the Turkish invasion of Kurdish-controlled land. However, President Trump decided to keep 500 military personnel in the region, which has led to conflict between the American forces there protecting U.S. oil interests and Russian...