Bone discovery at the Vatican prompts family to demand answers

Nov. 1 (UPI) – Two days after bone fragments were found at the Vatican, the brother of a teenage girl who went missing 35 years ago is calling for Pope Francis to share information he believes the religious leader has about her disappearance.

Emanuela Orlandi went missing on June 22, 1983, after leaving her house for a music lesson, sparking conspiracy theories and rumors that persist to this day. The discovery of skull and teeth bones at the Vatican's Italian embassy Tuesday rekindled speculation from Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela's brother. The possibility that the bones could be hers is painful to think about, Pietro Orlandi told NBC News.

"If Emanuela's bones really were found here at the Vatican Embassy, the truth needs to come out after 35 years of silence and cover-ups," heeee said. "Clearly these 35 years weighed heavily on the Vatican's image, because there must be something unspeakable in this story."

He has met with Pope Francis to plead his case, convinced the Holy See knows what happened.

"Maybe now they understand that this story will never go away. It will continue until we find the truth," he said.

The Vatican will conduct DNA tests on the bones to determine the age and gender of the remains.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/01/Bone-discovery-at-the-Vatican-prompts-family-to-demand-answers/1981541077012/?sl=1

Flights from Greece to Macedonia resume after 12 years

Nov. 1 (UPI) – Flights between Greece and Macedonia resumed Thursday after 12 years as their relations improve over efforts in the latter country to rename itself North Macedonia.

The first direct flight took off to Skopje, North Macedonia at 6:40 p.m. local time Thursday, from Athens, Greece.

Greece's Aegean Airlines, the country's largest air carrier, will operate flights between the countries twice weekly.

"This is indicative of the big improvement in our relations," Macedonia's ambassador to Athens, Darko Angelov, told the Guardian. "As neighboring countries it was long needed and will be greatly welcomed by the business community."

The rift between the countries has begun to ease after they recently settled a decades-long dispute over over Macedonia's name.

The former Yugoslav Republic has been Macedonia since 1991, but Greece had disputed the name since it has a region with the same name that has an ancient culture it claims.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/01/Flights-from-Greece-to-Macedonia-resume-after-12-years/4791541095523/?sl=3

China's missile launch from unmanned helicopter declared a 'success'

Nov. 1 (UPI) – China "successfully" launched a missile from an unmanned autonomous combat helicopter, with the projectile hitting a target 2.8 miles from the aircraft, according to state media.

The Global Times reported Thursday the air-to-surface missile test took place Oct. 23, and China's state-owned aviation company had developed the AV500W helicopter.

The drone was previously tested in December 2017, and the missile launch marks another important milestone, state media reported.

China News Network said the AV500W is designed to include a weapon system and has a maximum take-off weight of 1,100 pounds, Its effective payload is 385 pounds. The Chinese drone is capable of reaching over 5,000 meters in altitude, a maximum speed of 105 mph and a maximum cruising time of five hours.

The AV500W can be equipped with small laser-guided missiles, as well as machine guns. State media claimed the drone has "excellent maneuverability, camouflage and ambush capabilities."

The Chinese military could deploy the drone to accurately hit targets during counterterrorism operations and intercept drug smugglers, state media said.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/01/Chinas-missile-launch-from-unmanned-helicopter-declared-a-success/4951541092998/?sl=6

ISIS bomb expert blows himself up while making explosives

An Iraqi terrorist, who had a reputation for being a bomb expert, died on Monday when a bomb that he was constructing blew up.

Abu Moaaz, a bomb maker for ISIS, was manufacturing explosives in central Iraq, about 15 miles north of Baqubah when the explosion took place, The Daily Mail reported.

He had recently supplied ISIS numerous explosive devices that were used to kill many people, including law enforcement.

An #Islamic_State bomb maker lost his life Monday while trying to manufacture #explosive charges in #Diyala province.https://t.co/wm9y9j0tp8

— Iraqi News – Iraq (@IraqiNews_com) October 29, 2018

In 2014, ISIS held a stronghold that swept from Iraq to Syria, but that presence has shrunk considerably.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2018/10/isis-bomb-expert-blows-himself-up-while-making-explosives/

'New Dawn for Oppressed Minorities' but Religious Hate Rising: 6 Reactions to Asia Bibi's Acquittal

News of the acquittal of Christian mother Asia Bibi has been greeted as a major success and a "new dawn" by persecution watchdog groups after a nearly decade-long saga.

Fears of religious hatred and violence in revenge attacks were echoed by several groups, who noted that hardliners in Pakistan are protesting and vowing retribution over the Pakistan Supreme Court deciding to free Bibi.

The Christian mother of five was arrested back in 2009 after she was accused by Muslim coworkers of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad, something which she denied. In 2010 she was sentenced to death for blasphemy, and had been on death row ever since, sparking years-long campaigns by human rights advocates.

Bibi's family has thanked God for her release after years of uncertainty, but realizations are that she and other Christian minorities in Pakistan are in immediate danger.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/new-dawn-for-oppressed-minorities-but-religious-hate-rising-reactions-asia-bibi-acquittal-228287/

Trump Creates First National Monument Celebrating African-American Civil War Soldiers

President Trump used his executive powers to designate Camp Nelson as a national monument, establishing a 380-acre site in Kentucky to honor African Americans’ role as soldiers during the Civil War. Camp Nelson is the first national monument designation under President Trump.

Established as a Union supply depot and hospital during the Civil War, Camp Nelson became a recruitment and training center for African American soldiers and a refugee camp for their wives and children. Thousands of slaves risked their lives escaping to this site with the hope of securing their freedom and, ultimately, controlling their futures by aiding in the destruction of slavery.

Complete silence from the talking heads on the alphabet networks. I can already hear what the Left will say… “This only proves how racist President Donald Trump really is… only a racist wanting to cover their racism would build a monument to blacks….” or something like that!

https://conservativefiringline.com/trump-creates-first-national-monument-celebrating-african-american-civil-war-soldiers/

Christine Douglass-Williams: “Incalculable number of women” abused for decision to stop wearing full-body veils

In this interview with Sputnik News, Jihad Watch writer Christine Douglass-Williams exposes a great deal about the systematic and institutionalized abuse of women under Islamic law. Indeed, the second-class status of women is ingrained in Sharia, and set out in numerous passages of the Qur’an and Hadith.

The Qur’an teaches that men are superior to women and should beat those from whom they “fear disobedience”: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” — Qur’an 4:34

Muhammad’s child bride, Aisha, says in a hadith that Muhammad “struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: ‘Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?’” — Sahih Muslim 2127

The Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you, so go to your tilth as you will” — Qur’an 2:223

It declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as you choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” — Qur’an 2:282

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: “If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly, then only one, or one that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” — Qur’an 4:3

Williams told Sputnik that the global struggle for human rights today could be described as “dispiriting.” She explained that it’s plagued with an “us-versus-them narrative,” where “us” are “Western white people and Jews” and “them” are everyone else, including Muslims and blacks.

“When one thinks of human rights, one should simultaneously think of equality of value between races, genders and equal rights to practice religious beliefs. The key word is ‘equal’, not special privileges and supremacist entitlements that harm the whole. Why are human rights violations tolerated from some like: female inferiority, female genital mutilation, child brides, forced marriage, murdering gays, persecuting religious minorities?” she wondered….

“Many governments have cowered and prioritized their own fear of being called ‘racist’, ‘Islamophobic’, and ‘xenophobic’ over the security and freedoms of their people,” she concluded.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/11/christine-douglass-williams-incalculable-number-of-women-abused-for-decision-to-stop-wearing-full-body-veils

Accused Pittsburgh synagogue gunman pleads not guilty to 44 federal counts

Nov. 1 (UPI) – The man charged in the shooting attack that killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue pleaded not guilty to 44 charges at his arraignment Thursday.

The federal indictment charges Robert Bowers with 22 varying counts of obstruction of religion and 22 similar counts of use of a firearm.

Bowers walked into the courtroom Thursday, unlike an earlier hearing this week when he used a wheelchair. KDKA-TV reported that Bowers pleaded not guilty to each charge read by prosecutors.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/11/01/Accused-Pittsburgh-synagogue-gunman-pleads-not-guilty-to-44-federal-counts/6751541090028/?sl=1

Explore the aftermath of the CIA’s infamous “Halloween Massacre”

Agency officers protested their mass-firing under the Carter administration with graffiti, t-shirts, and obscene telegrams

The “Halloween Massacre,” the most horror movie-sounding thing to ever happen to the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bureaucratic nightmare that pushed out the Agency’s most senior employees. CIA officers were so outraged at the “massacre” that they reportedly responded with everything from screen-printing protest shirts, leaving graffiti in Agency buildings and even cussing out the newly-appointed CIA Director Stansfield Turner

This ultimately didn’t cut the Agency’s overhead enough, leading Turner to send a curt memo (reportedly only 70 words) to slightly over two hundred employees, informing them that their service would be terminated. (One newspaper article reporting this also noted that the Agency didn’t have enough staff members in their FOIA office.)

Halloween would become a harsh anniversary for the Agency, one they would attempt to compensate for in subsequent years.

The backlash was virtually unprecedented. Several outlets reported that graffiti critical of Turner began to spring up around Langley. Years later and in a different context, the Agency said that this was the sort of tactic that appealed to “intellectual dropouts, other misfits, and tantrum-throwing adolescents.”

When word began to spread that Turner had cut the staff because technological advancements meant that fewer people were needed, he was quick to correct the record. This selfless correction ultimately made him look worse, raising the question of whether it was a question of honor or an overzealous desire to protect the Agency’s sources and methods.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/nov/01/cia-massacre/

China leads market recovery as predicted trade deal emerges

The popular large-cap China ETF (ticker FXI) led the S&P 500 during the market uptick of the past several days, driven by signals from Beijing and Washington that a resolution of the Sino-American trade dispute was possible.

President Trump this morning tweeted that he had made progress on trade negotiations with China, and had spoken by telephone with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

The October plunge in US equity prices, as well as weakness in recent US economic data, give the Trump Administration an incentive to reach a resolution with China.

As I reported from Beijing October 23, China is looking for a framework for a trade deal that would allow Trump to claim credit for better protection for American intellectual property as well as changes in China’s industrial policy. China may tone down its rhetoric about dominating high-tech industries under the “Made in China 2025” program, source of contention with the United States, although it will not abandon its economic goals.

http://www.atimes.com/article/china-leads-market-recovery-as-predicted-trade-deal-emerges/

Chinese retail giant JD.com to build blockchain research lab

Research partnership links Beijing online trading giant with New Jersey tech college and Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

It has been widely reported that China wants nothing to do with crypto-currencies but that angst does not stretch to the underlying technology that powers them; distributed ledger, or blockchain. The internet and retail giants in China are clamoring to get ahead in this emerging industry and JD.com is the latest to embrace it.

It was announced this week that JD.com, in partnership with the Ying Wu College of Computing at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS), has launched a research lab for blockchain technology.

JD.com is a goliath in terms of trade; it has around 30% of the online e-commerce business in China with over 300 million users. Its new blockchain lab will be geared towards solving efficiency, stability, and scalability problems the technology currently faces and examining new applications for it. Among other areas this will include multi-year collaborative research efforts into fundamental consensus protocols, privacy protection, and security in decentralized applications, or dApps.

Deputy director of the Software Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhong Hua, said: “Through this partnership we will bring about blockchain innovation and promote industrial applications of blockchain technology.”

The lab will be headed by Dr Jian Pei, president of JD Big Data and Smart Supply Chain, Dr Qiang Tang, assistant professor in the Ying Wu College of Computing at NJIT, and Dr Zhenfeng Zhang, vice chief engineer at ISCAS.

“JD.com is a pioneer in the utilization of blockchain technology, and we are dedicated to exploring its potential by investing in the growth of the blockchain ecosystem through key strategic and research partnerships. Our partnership with NJIT and ISCAS will leverage our respective strengths and resources to drive the continued development of this cutting-edge technology and its wider deployment across many industries,” Dr Pei added.

http://www.atimes.com/article/chinese-retail-giant-jd-com-to-build-blockchain-research-lab/

>>3689922

Q is busy time traveling he went bar hopping in the roaring 20's , drinking with Fitzgerald , mentioned something about rewriting The Great Gatsby ,said something about being back after the elections and before Christmas

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: 100 percent of Univ. of Oregon admin, 99.95 percent of faculty donate to Dems

Campus Reform analyzed the donation records of the University of Oregon System (UO) employees from 2017-2018, using publicly available records from the Federal Election Commission, in order to determine the political leanings of faculty and administrators at the college.

According to a Campus Reform analysis, 100 percent of all UO administrators who donated to political candidates or causes gave a total of $10,014.60 to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, such as Chelsea Manning for Congress and the Democratic Party of Oregon.

They contributed 99.946 percent of the money to Democrat politicians or organizations. Just $35.17, .0005 percent of donations, went to Republican causes or politicians.

[RELATED: EXCLUSIVE REPORT: 96.1 percent of University of Texas administrators, 93.5 percent of faculty donated to Dems]

In total, UO employees donated $98,081.88 from 2017-2018. Of that amount, 99.6 percent of donations were to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, while .4 percent of the donations, a combined $363.28 from three UO employees, were to Republican politicians or Republican organizations.

Two-hundred and one faculty members, specifically, donated a total of $65,632.91 to politicians or political organizations. They contributed 99.946 percent of the money to Democrat politicians or organizations. Just $35.17, .0005 percent of donations, went to Republican causes or politicians, like House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Meanwhile, 21 administrators donated $10,014.60 to Democrat political candidates and politicians, such as Suzanne Bonamici’s Congressional campaign. According to the records, there were no donations made by UO administrators to Republican politicians or Republican organizations from 2017-2018.

Act Blue and Emily’s List, a Democrat focused pro-choice organization, received the highest amount of donations in the Democrat and Democrat category.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11468

Dartmouth prof: 'If we don't abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us'

A Dartmouth professor argued on Tuesday that "if we don't abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us."

Dartmouth College lecturer Mark Bray made the remark in an op-ed for Truthout, titled "How Capitalism Stokes the Far Right and Climate Catastrophe."

"We must recognize that the climate crisis and the resurgence of the far right are two of the most acute symptoms of our failure to abolish capitalism."

[RELATED: Pro-socialism prof blames capitalism for world wars, slavery]

"We are on a deadline," Bray says. "Lesser-evilism among capitalist politicians may have some rationale when spending five minutes casting a ballot on Election Day, but we don’t have time for it to be a guiding strategical outlook. We need to organize movements to build popular power and shut down the industries that threaten our existence."

"Fascism is ascendant," the Ivy League professor continues. "The world is on fire. This is no time to be patient. If we don’t abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us."

Bray claims that the far right advocates for environmentally destructive policies, alleging that the faction prioritizes interests of certain groups over those of the entire planet, but takes his argument a step further by blaming capitalism.

"We must recognize that the climate crisis and the resurgence of the far right are two of the most acute symptoms of our failure to abolish capitalism," the scholar asserts. "A capitalist system that prioritizes profit and perpetual growth over all else is the mortal enemy of global aspirations for a sustainable economy that satisfies needs rather than stock portfolios."

Bray's faculty profile lists the Dartmouth lecturer as an associated visiting scholar of the school's Gender Research Institute. It also describes him as "a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe." But Bray seems to have done more than just document issues of radicalism.

The professor donated half of the profits from his book "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook" to Antifa

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11470