PRESS RELEASE: Nearly Half of U.S. States Don’t Protect Girls from Female Genital Mutilation

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Now that a district judge has declared a federal ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) unconstitutional, perpetrators in 23 states across America have a free pass to inflict this barbaric procedure on girls as young as 7 years old.

That must stop, says internationally renowned attorney and activist specializing in human rights and child welfare advocacy Elizabeth Yore, who heads the national EndFGMToday campaign. Yore has written a new opinion piece for The Daily Caller, where she makes an urgent call to these 23 states to enact their own tough FGM laws.

“Before District Judge Bernard Friedman’s ruling, FGM had been a federal crime in the United States since 1996,” Yore noted. “Additionally, 27 states have also committed to protecting girls by enacting their own laws against the terrible procedure that leaves physical and emotional scars for a lifetime. Yet tragically, girls in 23 states across the country remain at risk because FGM is a growing criminal activity in the United States, and the 23 states that have yet to enact their own anti-FGM laws need to do so quickly—hopefully in 2019.

https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2018/12/11/press-release-nearly-half-of-u-s-states-dont-protect-girls-from-female-genital-mutilation/

Johns Hopkins, Bristol-Myers must face $1 billion syphilis infections suit

(Reuters) – A federal judge in Maryland said The Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N) and the Rockefeller Foundation must face a $1 billion lawsuit over their roles in a 1940s U.S. government experiment that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis.

In a decision on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang rejected the defendants’ argument that a recent Supreme Court decision shielding foreign corporations from lawsuits in U.S. courts over human rights abuses abroad also applied to domestic corporations absent Congressional authorization.

Chuang’s decision is a victory for 444 victims and relatives of victims suing over the experiment, which was aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin and stopping the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases.

The experiment echoed the government’s Tuskegee study on black American men who were deliberately left untreated for syphilis even after penicillin was discovered.

https://bestlatestnews.com/johns-hopkins-bristol-myers-must-face-1-billion-syphilis-infections-suit-2/

A son of a drug cartel boss betrays his father in testifying against El Chapo

New York: Aside from the chiefs who ran the organisation, no one likely knows more about the Sinaloa drug cartel than Vicente Zambada Niebla.

A son of Ismael Zambada García, one of the cartel's leaders, Zambada, from an early age, was groomed to take control of the group.

But on Thursday, in a spectacular reversal, the cartel prince betrayed his father - and his birthright - testifying for more than five hours about nearly every aspect of the drug-trafficking empire: smuggling routes, money-laundering schemes, bloody wars, personal vendettas and lavish bribes. When it came to the enterprise he seemed poised to lead one day, Vicente Zambada proved he knew almost everyone and everything

His bravura turn on the witness stand came at the midway point in the drug trial of his father's former partner, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous crime lord known as El Chapo. Since the trial began in November, seven other witnesses who worked with Guzmán have testified against him. But none were more conversant with the structure and details of the kingpin's business than Vicente Zambada.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/a-son-of-a-drug-cartel-boss-betrays-his-father-in-testifying-against-el-chapo-20190105-p50ppx.html

Elite forces dispatched in northeast Brazil after more violence

Jan. 4 (UPI) – The northeastern Brazilian state of Ceara saw more violence Friday, which led to one death and the arrests of 45 people.

Attackers set fire to a school bus and other vehicles, like a tractor and a garbage truck. There were also arson attacks against banking agencies, transit authority buildings, a municipal building, police stations, fuel stations and a lottery agency, G1 Globo reported.

A social security office and other public buildings were also targeted. One suspect who tried to destroy a traffic light was killed in a shootout with police.

Friday's attacks were a continuation of violence that broke out between Wednesday and Thursday, which included dynamite under a highway overpass that damaged a column and exposed steel and debris, R7 reported.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/01/04/Elite-forces-dispatched-in-northeast-Brazil-after-more-violence/6241546624704/

In 2011, a national heroin epidemic was the equivalent of dry tinder, lacking only a match.

Florida lit it up.

Purdue Pharma and El Chapo had provided kindling: The pharma company’s unprecedented marketing campaign for its blockbuster OxyContin painkiller did not stop with pill sales. Purdue marketing helped ensure that for the first time in U.S. history, heavy doses of one of the most addictive substances known to man would be prescribed by family doctors for everything from sprained ankles to migraines.

Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, long focused on marijuana and transporting South American cocaine, took note of America’s new-found appetite for narcotics and began seeding mountainsides with poppy plants, the source of heroin.

But it took Florida to set the heroin epidemic ablaze, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

For years, Florida’s repeated failure to rein in its homegrown prescription painkiller scourge nourished a bumper crop of opioid addicts and dealers.

It was widely reported that rogue clinics in Palm Beach and Broward counties funneled OxyContin and fueled addiction in Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and West Virginia.

It was much worse.

DEA reports and federal court records show that by 2010, Florida was the reliable opioid dealer of choice to users and dealers in not only the Southeast, but also in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions — an area spanning virtually every state east of the Mississippi River.

And when Florida finally turned off the free-flowing oxycodone spigot in 2011, drug users in states once fed by Florida oxycodone did exactly what users in Palm Beach County and Florida did: They turned to heroin.

https://heroin.palmbeachpost.com/

Husband saves wife by shooting at armed robbers

When two men tried to rob a woman during midday in a Katy, Texas parking lot, her husband stepped in and fired shots at the suspects.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to shots fired around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at Randall’s store on Fry Road, ABC 13 reported. The couple had just finished grocery shopping and as they approached their vehicle a “black Cadillac SUV with two men in it pulled into a parking space in front of them.”

Husband saves wife’s life by shooting armed robbers. https://t.co/NIRpdeINAs

— Second Amendment Institute (@sainational) December 31, 2018

One of the suspects exited the vehicle, brandished a gun, and told the woman to hand over her purse.

The husband then pulled out his gun and fired four shots at the suspects.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/01/husband-saves-wife-by-shooting-at-armed-robbers/

Italian populists dodge first big banking test

ROME — The European Central Bank's decision to take temporary control of Italy’s troubled Banca Carige allows the populist government, which has put banks at the top of its list of enemies, to delay an unpalatable choice.

The ECB's intervention on Wednesday means the government — an increasingly uneasy coalition of the anti-establishment 5Star Movement and the far-right League — doesn't have to find a solution to the bank’s financial problems, avoiding (for now) the use of state aid, which would have enraged many of the coalition partners' voters.

The main risk was that the failure of Carige to raise needed capital of up to €400 million could reverberate across the entire Italian banking system, possibly sparking a systemic crisis. That's a risk the seven-month-old government wouldn’t be able to afford, as it remains torn between ambitious spending plans and modest growth forecasts for this year.

“If there was a risk of contagion from Banca Carige, that has been averted for now,” said an official close to the European banking supervisory authorities, who declined to be named. “The ECB supervision grants continuity and gives more time to the bank to find a partner and pursue its turnaround plan.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/banca-carige-crisis-tests-populist-italian-government-gionvanni-tria-european-central-bank/

“Attack on democracy”: Three arrests after explosion near office of right-wing AfD party in Germany

A device exploded in front of an Alternative for Germany (AfD) party office in Döbeln, Deutsche Welle reports.

The heavy explosion took place on Thursday at 7:20 pm, and “sounded like an attack on its office” the AfD says at its Facebook page.

“The fact that there’s only material damage is a wonder and the political motivation behind the attack is being investigated,” the statement continues.

In the meantime three men were arrested on suspicion of committing a politically motivated attack. They are 29, 32 and 50-years-old and may soon be released as the public prosecutor did not make an application for detention, a spokeswoman said on Friday.

Accordingly, there would be no sufficient grounds for detention, such as a risk of absconding. The men are still considered suspects.

AfD leader Alice Weidel said she was “deeply shocked” and called the act an “attack on democracy”.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/01/attack-on-democracy-three-arrests-after-explosion-near-office-of-right-wing-afd-party-in-germany/

Two sociologists detail ‘The Rise of Victimhood Culture’ and how it’s used for social control

Professors offer possible solution too — tout the principles of ‘dignity culture’

In 2014, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, associate professors of sociology at Cal State Los Angeles and West Virginia University, respectively, published a scholarly article titled “Microaggression and Moral Cultures” that detailed the rise of a “victimhood culture.”

Sure enough, a paper that discussed microaggressions in what many perceived as a negative light was denounced as — wait for it — a microaggression.

Critics took umbrage to their “victimhood” terminology, with one reader calling their paper “tenuous and capricious” and that it “is itself a microaggression,” actually “closer to a real aggression.”

In 2015, the two sociologists filed a solicited op-ed to the online magazine TechCrunch titled “Microaggressions and the Moralistic Internet.” The editor they worked with initially praised the column, telling them it would run soon. A month later he told the two professors their column was spiked.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/two-sociologists-detail-the-rise-of-victimhood-culture-and-how-its-used-for-social-control/

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The 46th annual March for Life Rally, which marks the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade abortion opinion, will be held on January 18, 2019 in Washington, D.C. This year’s March for Life theme is “Unique from Day One” and conveys the message that each life begins at conception. The stated purpose of the march is to end abortion by “uniting, educating and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square.”

The March for Life Rally will take place at noon at 12th St. on the National Mall, in between Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive. Participants will then march to the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill at approximately 1:00 p.m. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director, and Ben Shapiro, a political commentator, writer, and lawyer, are scheduled as speakers.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/marching-to-end-abortion