>https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1296826908181778433
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/512970-nearly-600-miami-dade-public-school-staff-diagnosed
https://twitter.com/CTrevorsky/status/1296491889877831682
@andersoncooper
Hey dude, if it's true this is you as a kid, we will help out. We wanna save the children, if you were one of those children it's okay, we wanna save you too no matter what. Who could blame you if this is true, not like you could opt-out. Keep talking about Qanon
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/israeli-police-launch-inquiry-into-alleged-gang-of-teenager
Israeli police launch inquiry into alleged gang rape of teenager
Police in Israel have opened an investigation into the alleged gang rape of a girl in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, in a case that has sparked outrage.
One of the suspects said about 30 men had sex with the 16-year-old, but denied she had been raped, according to reports in Israeli media.
Police said they had made two arrests so far and anticipated identifying further suspects in the investigation. While officers are yet to detail their findings, local newspapers reported the teenager was attacked in a hotel room by multiple men, while others filmed the alleged assaults.
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the shocking case amounted to a “crime against humanity” and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
Israel’s welfare minister, Itzik Shmuli, said Israeli society had a duty to fight a culture that allowed “such shocking cases” to happen.
The investigation comes after 12 Israelis were accused of gang raping a British teenager last summer in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa. There has been widespread criticism of the handling of the case and the fact that those accused received a hero’s welcome when they returned to Israel.
The British teenager was convicted of public mischief over her claim, spent more than four weeks in prison and had to remain on the island for a further five months for court proceedings.
She said she was coerced into signing a confession and has vowed to clear her name by taking the case to Cyprus’s supreme court.
Tourism to Cyprus this summer has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with many Israelis instead travelling south to Eilat, which lies on Israel’s border with Jordan.
The alleged Eilat gang rape reportedly happened on 12 August and the victim went to police two days later.
Ofra Siboni, a lawyer representing one of the suspects, said his 27-year-old client admitted to being in the hotel room at the time of the attack.
“The young man is cooperating with investigators, denies the suspicions and has given his version of the sequence of events,” Siboni told Haaretz.
A court spokesperson told the Guardian the case was being heard behind closed doors and so details of the proceedings would not be made public.
Israeli women’s groups were due to hold protests across the country on Thursday evening.
>The investigation comes after 12 Israelis were accused of gang raping a British teenager last summer in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/30/briton-found-guilty-over-ayia-napa-false-claim-cyprus
UK raises concerns with Cyprus over teenager convicted of lying about rape
The UK government is to raise concerns with the authorities in Cyprus over the fairness of a trial in which a British teenager was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped.
A judge ruled on Monday that the 19-year-old wilfully indulged in public mischief in claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males aged between 15 and 22 while she was on holiday in Ayia Napa in July.
The ruling by Michalis Papathanasiou at Famagusta’s district court in Paralimni was immediately and strongly condemned by the defence team and rights groups. They claimed the trial was full of legal irregularities that called the verdict into question and suggested a desire to protect relations with Israel may have influenced the process.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The UK is seriously concerned about the fair trial guarantees in this deeply distressing case and we will be raising the issue with the Cypriot authorities.”
The case against the student hinged on a statement retracting her original accusation, signed after hours of questioning by detectives in a police station that was neither recorded nor attended by a lawyer. She said in court that the police had forced her to change her story, telling the judge she was “scared for my life”.
“We believe there have been many violations of procedure and the rights of a fair trial,” her defence lawyer, Nicoletta Charalambidou, said. Moments earlier, the defendant and her mother had emerged from the courthouse wearing masks with images of sewn-up lips on them, brought by protesters from the Network Against Violence Against Women (NAVAW), who filled the court and demonstrated outside.
Charalambidou said: “We are planning to appeal the decision before the supreme court, and if justice fails … take our case to the European court of human rights.”
“The judge has been very strict,” she told the Guardian. “He has rejected all the witnesses of defence and our repeated requests to expedite the case.”
The legal aid group Justice Abroad said the trial had been far from fair because Papathanasiou had refused to consider whether the defendant had actually been assaulted.
“We are not surprised by the result given the frequent refusal during the trial of the judge to consider evidence which supported the fact that the teenager had been raped,” said Michael Polak, a barrister with the group.
“Shutting down questioning from our Cypriot advocates and the production of evidence into the trial on a handful of occasions, the judge stridently stated, ‘This is not a rape case, I will not consider whether she was raped or not.’”
The way court proceedings had been conducted violated Cypriot, European community and European human rights law, he claimed.
Among those called to testify was Dr Marios Matsakis, a prominent forensic pathologist who told the court he was entirely convinced “violence was exercised” during the alleged incident. Scratch marks and bruising on the teenager’s body were “consistent with rape having taken place”, he said.
But Papathanasiou insisted the young woman had fabricated an imaginary offence. “The guilt of the accused is proven. She has confessed,” he pronounced.
The Briton looked visibly stunned, as the judge announced that sentencing would be deferred until 7 January. Her mother burst into tears.
The teenager, who has already spent a month in prison, could be jailed for up to a year and fined in excess of €1,000 (£850). Although released on bail from Nicosia general prison, she has been forced to relinquish her passport, moving from safe house to safe house ever since.
Describing the verdict as “absolutely astonishing”, her mother told ITV News: “It would be an absolute injustice if they decide to imprison her for any more days than the four and a half weeks she’s already spent in prison.
“She is resolute to see justice, she’s absolutely resolute that she’ll fight it, she wants to appeal and I will fully support her 100%, as will her lawyers. So we’ll continue on with appeal and go down that route. If we end up in the European court of human rights, that’s great.”
>UK raises concerns with Cyprus over teenager convicted of lying about rape
The case has made headlines in Cyprus, Israel and the UK ever since the young woman, who was in the country on a working holiday, reported the alleged gang rape. She told police how she had been having consensual sex with one of the Israelis when the others came in, and she was pinned down and attacked.
The men, most of whom were about to enter the army as conscripts, were rounded up and remanded in custody. The woman revoked the criminal complaint weeks later, issuing a statement that changed her status from victim to suspect overnight. The alleged assailants were allowed to return home the next day, flying into Ben Gurion airport where they were greeted as heroes.
The defence team later described the confession, extracted after eight hours of police questioning, as the product of coercion. They argued its poor English and grammar made clear that the “highly educated” teenager had not written it.
Ritsa Pekri, defending, asked the judge on Monday to mitigate the sentence, saying the young woman suffered from psychological problems and was taking antidepressants.
Rights groups have described the trial – which was beset with frequent adjournments and unexpected twists – as a travesty of justice. Senior officials in Cyprus’s criminal justice system have also voiced objections, saying privately that the island’s attorney general should have dismissed court proceedings.
Local protesters gathered at the court in a display of solidarity with the defendant for the first time on Monday. Holding banners aloft in the rain, the women, young and old, accused the Cypriot authorities of submitting to a deeply conservative society, one in which reports of rape are all too often ignored.
They said court officials and police were neither trained nor sensitised in matters of gender, and alleged that national interests had influenced the verdict.
“We are here to defend a 19-year-old girl who has been horribly punished because of political interests,” said Andri Gioakatzi, who works in one of the sovereign UK base areas in the former British colony. “She has had to pay the price of Cyprus’s desire to have good relations with Israel. That is why she has been through this and they let all the Israeli boys go.”
Filing into the packed courtroom for the morning hearing, the protesters angered assembled police and the judge by donning masks with the image of sewn-up lips. The masks symbolised the enforced silence women were often subjected to when they encountered violence, activists said. Papathanasiou ordered them to uncover their faces or face arrest for contempt of court.
“It is extraordinary that the court felt threatened by this piece of cloth and should demand that we remove it,” said Zelia Gregoriou, who teaches gender studies at the University of Cyprus and is a member of the newly created NAVAW.
“This is certainly not the first case of rape in Cyprus and certainly not the first time that a rape complaint is ignored, but it also takes place at a very significant time when Cyprus is trying to reinvent its relationship with Israel both economically and as a partner in defence.”
As the race to tap gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean has intensified in recent years, the partitioned island’s internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government has worked hard to forge ever better ties with Israel.
The protesters said Monday’s verdict also spoke of the desire of authorities to “look good” at a time when Cyprus’s police force is facing unprecedented scrutiny for a string of perceived failures, including in detecting a serial killer who has since admitted killing seven foreign women and girls on the island.
“There is no doubt that this young British woman is a victim of the need to seal that political friendship,” said Gregoriou. “She was an essential sacrifice. We have come to help her belatedly, but help her we will.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iym8iIWzcs
Interview with Jillian and Eric Wuestenberg, Detroit Firearms Display (John's Briefs)
https://nypost.com/2020/07/10/white-lady-who-pulled-gun-on-black-woman-says-she-feared-for-her-life/
This song is a real treasure.
Gonna try to find the LP
>helps when scrolling through aggressive tweets
>I think spacey is or was Bill Clinton's handler
Whoever devised this system is a genius.
All you had to do is unleash mankind, and look at the fury of information we're capable of dredging through.
>https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/games/news/microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-jeffrey-epstein-private-island-pc-a9678791.html
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 players seek out virtual recreation of Jeffrey Epstein’s private island
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 players are reportedly flocking to the island infamously owned by late billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The recently released flight simulation game generates a digital recreation of the entire planet, using satellite data connected to Microsoft’s Bing Maps.
The privately owned island – referred to by some as “paedophile island” – in Little St James, US Virgin Islands, was used by Epstein as a location for underaged sex trafficking.
On YouTube and Reddit, players have shared advice on how to locate the island, which involves flying to a specific set of co-ordinates.
Since his arrest and death, Epstein has become the subject of significant media attention and a number of conspiracy theories, which could account for the interest in the island by Flight Simulator players.
The island was raided by the FBI in 2019, in the wake of Epstein’s death while detained in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Centre.
In a tweet that quickly went viral, journalist @slasher shared an image of several planes – each piloted by different online players – in extremely close proximity on the island.
The image was accompanied with the caption: “People are gathering at Epstein’s island in Microsoft Flight Simulator and solving this case ourselves”
While Epstein’s island is present in Flight Simulator, his villa has not been accurately recreated, which calls into question what exactly players hope to gain by visiting the location.
Flight Simulator has earned rave reviews for its graphics and technical achievements, and has been described by many outlets as the first game of the “next generation”.
While most people have been hugely impressed by the game’s ability to simulate the entire globe, a few discrepancies have been widely shared on social media.
These include the representation of Buckingham Palace as a palace-shaped block of office buildings, which provoked glee from British republicans.
>Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 players seek out virtual recreation of Jeffrey Epstein’s private island
Visiting Jeffrey Epstein's Island - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (4K)
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