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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 4:30:01 PM
People

Over 1 million march in Seoul to demand President Park's resignation

© Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
People attend a protest calling for Park Geun-hye to step down in central Seoul, South Korea, November 26, 2016.
About 1.3 million protesters have gathered in Seoul to demand the resignation of scandal-plagued South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

The protest's organizers have said they expect that number to grow to 1.5 million before the end of the night, and that a further 500,000 are gathering at various protests around the country, Reuters reports.

The huge demonstrations, which began five weeks ago, are the largest in South Korea since the pro-democracy protests in the 1980s.

© Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
Police buses are parked on a road to block protesters.
Park is embroiled in a corruption scandal involving her long-time confidante Choi Soon-sil, who has been indicted on bribery charges.

Prosecutors wish to speak to the president over allegations that she colluded with Choi to offer favors to businesses that contributed money to two foundations controlled by Choi.

The president has apologized twice on national television, but has so far resisted calls to resign. "It is hard to forgive myself and sleep at night with feelings of sorrow," Park said of the scandal.

The leader of the main opposition party described the apology as insincere.

Opposition parties are attempting to put forward a parliamentary motion to impeach Park over the alleged collusion. The motion looks set to go to a vote in early December.

As of 8pm Saturday, The Korean Times reported 1.3 million attended the largest protest in Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, where activists and musicians entertained the enormous crowd.

Police said around 1,500 civic groups were involved in organizing the massive rally and that, although all previous protests have passed peacefully, 25,000 officers were required to police the event.



(sott.net)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 8:55:26 PM

African ant 'supercolony' poised to invade the planet


A Lepisiota ant killing a termite.

Source: D. Magdalena Sorger
A Lepisiota ant killing a termite.

A species of ant in the forests of Ethiopia looks poised to become a globally invasive species, capable of spreading around the world, disrupting ecosystems and becoming a pest for humans.

The species Lepisiota canescens is showing signs it forms "supercolonies," which are colonies comprised of more than one nest. These supercolonies allow a single species of ant to spread out over a large territory, a key step to becoming an invasive species.

This concerns a group of researchers from various institutions in American and Ethiopia, who published a study on the ants this week in the journal Insectes Sociaux. They observed that one similar species of ant in the same genus (Lepisiota) have invaded South Africa's Kruger National Park, and another temporarily shut down Australia's Darwin Port after the ants were discovered among cargo.

"The species we found in Ethiopia may have a high potential of becoming a globally invasive species," said lead author D. Magdalena Sorger, a post-doctoral researcher with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, in a press release. "Invasive species often travel with humans, so as tourism and global commerce to this region of Ethiopia continues to increase, so will the likelihood that the ants could hitch a ride, possibly in plant material or even in the luggage of tourists. All it takes is one pregnant queen. That's how fire ants started!"

The ant colonies are in the forests that surround Orthodox Christian churches in Ethiopia, which are some of the last natural forests in the country. Ethiopian Christians have long surrounded their churches with woodland. Some of these forests are more than a thousand years old, and are unusually rich areas of biodiversity in areas otherwise barren or deforested for agriculture.

The researchers say these ants have built the largest supercolonies ever observed among an ant species in its native habitat — the largest supercolony they found spanned 24 miles. That, along with the ants' diet and nesting habits suggest they have the characteristics of an invasive species.

Ant supercolonies are rare — out of the 12,000 known species, only about 20 have ever shown supercolony behavior. Other species of ants tend to be more territorial and less tolerant of ants from other nests.

The Argentine ant is perhaps the most famous example of the supercolony builder. Argentine ants have spread across a roughly 2,500 miles of Western Europe, including parts of Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal. In the U.S., California is home to an Argentine ant supercolony spanning more than 500 miles. That's because in their non-native habitats, they can thrive.

Once in a region, the invasive ants drive out native ant populations, and though ant wars may seem to be of little consequence to some, the invasions have impacts that can often be seen without a magnifying glass.

The Argentine ants' assault on native California ant species has also led to declines in predators that fed on those native ants, such as the coastal horned lizard.

They have also become a pain for Californians who have reported them infesting homes, crawling out of plumbing and even sneaking into handbags.

The team included scientists from several institutions in Ethiopia and the U.S., including North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, The University of Tulsa, Bahir Dar University, California Academy of Sciences, and Smithsonian Institution.

Sorger said that the research will offer a record of how the ants live in their natural habitat, which could be critical if the species becomes invasive. "Rarely do we know anything about the biology of a species BEFORE it becomes invasive," Sorger said in the release.


(cnbc.com)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 9:04:40 PM

US Navy Plans To Release 20,000 Tons Of Explosives, Heavy Metals Into Pacific Ocean

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 10:51:34 PM

Trump slams ‘brutal dictator’ Fidel Castro. Obama takes a softer approach.

Olivier Knox
Chief Washington Correspondent
Yahoo News

Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday greeted the news that Fidel Castro had died by denouncing Cuba’s longtime leader as a “brutal dictator” with a legacy of bloodshed. Trump, who vowed to help the island nation’s people achieve freedom and prosperity, did not explicitly repeat campaign-trail promises to roll back President Obama’s historic outreach to the island nation.

The entrepreneur’s reaction could scarcely have been more different than the sitting commander in chief’s response. Obama declared that now was the time to “extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people” and largely sanitized deep Cold War-era criticisms of Castro’s record on human rights and economic freedom.

“We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” the president said. “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

Trump, whose initial reaction to the news was the four-word tweet “Fidel Castro is dead!” took a far sharper tone in a written statement later issued by his transition team.

“Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” Trump said. “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

Fidel Castro attends the Cuban Communist Party Congress in Havana on April 19, 2016. (Photo: Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate /AP)

While Trump and Obama portrayed Castro in vastly different lights, both put an emphasis on future U.S.–Cuba relations.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” Trump said.

Obama noted the “discord and profound political disagreements” that characterized U.S.-Cuba relations for decades after the 1959 revolution that swept Castro to power but emphasized his administration’s efforts to embrace engagement.

“During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends — bonds of family, culture, commerce and common humanity,” the president said. “The Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”

President-elect Donald Trump listens as President Obama speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office on Nov. 10, 2016. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The president-elect did not repeat past promises to roll back Obama’s historic outreach to Cuba. On October 12, Trump had declared on Twitter that he “will reverse Obama’s Executive Orders and concessions towards Cuba until freedoms are restored,” but there was no similar language in his statements on Saturday. Since Election Day, Trump hasseemed to soften some of this hard-line campaign promises, leaving it unclear exactly what he’ll do on issues like Cuba when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Obama and Fidel’s brother, Raúl Castro, Cuba’s current leader, shocked the world in December 2014 by announcing a new era in U.S.-Cuba relations. The two nations resumed diplomatic relations; Washington took Havana off the list of state sponsors of terrorism; and both sides took steps toward greater economic relations. Unable to lift the decades-old trade embargo without Congressional approval, Obama has taken a number of executive steps to make it easier for Americans to travel to Cuba and spend money there. The White House has been working to make the policy “irreversible,” while some Democrats and a majority of Republicans want to undo at least some of his outreach once Trump enters the Oval Office.

Obama’s statement did not repeat any of his State Department’s sharp criticisms of Cuba’s human rights record, issued in its annual report on international right practices. But it’s relatively rare for sitting U.S. presidents to use the death of another world leader as a springboard for denouncing that person. Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and rarely hesitated to criticize Moscow. But his White House’s statements on the deaths of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov mostly muted those complaints.


(Yahoo News)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 11:29:43 PM
Trump calls for mass deportations. This Indian state is already weeding out undocumented Muslims.



Mohibul Islam Badshah, left, stands next to his demolished school in Hatimuria, India. Badshah is a schoolteacher and is among the 200 Muslim squatter families that were uprooted from temporary shelters earlier this month after villagers nearby grew suspicious that they were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. (Rama Lakshmi/The Washington Post)

Eight years ago, a dozen families showed up at this quiet farming village, saying floodwaters had washed away their homes.

They spoke with a different accent, and the villagers wondered if they might be illegal Muslim immigrants who had crossed the porous border from neighboring Bangladesh. Illegal immigration has been a contentious issue in this northeastern state of Assam for over three decades.

Yet “we pitied them and gave them refuge,” said Lavanya Bisaya, the 56-year-old mother of the village headman.

But as the newcomers’ numbers swelled to 200 families, tensions began to mount, until finally villagers were protesting and chanting, “Liberate our land, remove outsiders!” echoing a debate raging across Assam.



Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that "all immigration laws will be enforced" if he became president. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

As Donald Trump has pledged to throw out up to 3 million undocumented immigrants from the United States, this remote Indian state of 31 million is in the midst of an effort of its own to identify and “weed out” some of the more than 20 million illegalimmigrants from Bangladesh living in India.

Officials launched a laborious effort to certify the Bangladeshi population in India two years ago, but the drive that has been infused with new vigor and cash since the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won state elections in April.

“The Hindu rate of population growth is declining. But the Muslim rate is rising. Most of the Muslims here are from Bangladesh. If this continues, the Assamese Hindus will become a minority soon; we will lose our language, our culture, our identity,” said Himanta Biswa Sarma, finance minister in the Assam government.

Fears that terrorist groups with global backing from neighboring Bangladesh would cross over the border to radicalize local youths have also galvanized the effort, officials say.

“Our detect-delete-deport campaign is even more important because now Islamic extremist groups from Bangladesh are also sending their people to India along with the immigrants on this route,” said Samujjal Bhattacharya, a longtime activist.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh fought for independence from Pakistan and became an independent nation in 1971. Assam’s border with Bangladesh stretches for about 160 miles, 40 percent of it through wetlands, making it relatively easy for poor Bangladeshis looking for work in India to cross over. Anger over their presence in India dates to the 1980s, when the state endured six years of anti-immigration agitation that spawned armed guerrilla groups.

As public rhetoric against the immigrants has soared, activists fear that declaring hundreds of thousands of people here illegally may whip up anti-Muslim sentiment and leave India with a humanitarian crisis because there is no treaty to deport them.

Speaking in Estero, Fla., Sept. 19, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said recent bombings in New York and New Jersey and stabbings in Minnesota were made possible by a failed immigration system. (The Washington Post)

Detecting the illegal immigrants is not easy, either, officials say, because many of them have mingled with local populations over time, obtained forged documents, bought land and even voted.

In the past two years, officials digitized the handwritten census data of 1951 and the voter list of 1971 and created a legacy database.

People lined up to submit over 60 million documents related to birth, land ownership and education to prove they were citizens.

But many applicants have lied and declared false connections to citizens picked out from the legacy data, officials say.

For example, 31 people have claimed to be the children of the same father. Another group of applicants have claimed the same woman as their mother — if it were true, she would have been giving birth to a new child every month.

To combat fraud, officials are now poring over family trees of two generations of each applicant to corroborate information about parents and siblings.

“The family tree corroboration is my real weapon against fraud. There is a lot of public anxiety around this exercise,” said Prateek Hajela, who heads the National Register of Citizens. “This project is like a river of fire and we have to swim in it.”

The exercise is estimated to cost $138 million and several deadlines have already been missed.

Meanwhile, people are growing impatient.

In the past year, Hatimuria village became a mini-battleground of locals versus immigrants — with street fights and tense night patrols.

Tensions worsened last month when the villagers erected a bamboo fence to block the passage of newcomers to a squatters’ settlement, and filed a police complaint. When the authorities did not act, the women locked up the police station and staged a two day sit-in.

Bowing to public pressure, the police arrived days later with an elephant and a bulldozer and mowed down the squatters’ shelters.

“There are so many of them spread all over the state; we are anxiously waiting for the government to finish its paperwork and uproot them,” said Phukan Chandra Medhi, the village elder.

But the evicted families have resettled in another vacant plot of land near the river not too far away. They say they have papers to prove they are legal.

“These days, the public mood is very negative. You have an argument with somebody on the street and they call you a Bangladeshi,” said Noor Jamal Ali, a 30-year-old tailor.

“My father was born here. How many times do I need to shout that I am a citizen?” asked Mohibul Islam Badshah, a schoolteacher.

Even though the immigrant population also includes some Hindus who entered India from Bangladesh, the sentiment against immigrants has morphed into rhetoric against Muslims, who make up about 34 percent of the state’s population.

“If indeed there are illegal immigrants, send them back. But don’t stamp the Bangladeshi tag on all Muslims so loosely,” said Aminul Islam, general secretary of the All India United Democratic Front, a political party that represents many Muslim voters.

Crossing into India is not very difficult, security officials say. It takes a few hours by boat, and there are many middlemen along the border who help find safe routes, often with the connivance of corrupt officers.

“As soon as they arrive, their priority is to enter their names into the voter list somehow. They forge all kinds of documents and pay bribes for this,” said Upamanyu Hazarika, a Supreme Court lawyer and convener of Forum Against Infiltration. His group mobilized the women in Hatimuria against the squatters.

Many of those who have been caught up in the citizenship drive who cannot prove their lineage are now languishing in detention centers.

“It is no coincidence that most people declared foreigners by the tribunals are extremely poor and illiterate, and cannot access competent lawyers,” said Aman Wadud, who provides free legal aid to “doubtful” voters.

On the day the police came to Hatimuria to evict the squatters, Bisaya and other women climbed the rocks and watched the scene from a distance.

“As a human being I felt sad seeing them run here and there, holding on to their children and things as their tin houses were crushed,” Bisaya recalled. “But we have been tolerant for too long. They stole our goats, lemons and bicycles. Tomorrow they would have stolen our jobs and land, too.”

Rama Lakshmi has been with The Post's India bureau since 1990. She is a staff writer and India social media editor for Post World.
Follow @RamaNewDelhi




(The Washington Post)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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