The things that are done in the name of science!
A researcher who was seeking a way to keep people from touching their faces during the COVID-19 outbreak, was himself hospitalized, when the magnets he was using to test his theory, got stuck up his nose!
With medical authorities around the world advising people to stop touching their faces to help slow the spread of the virus, Melbourne-based Daniel Reardon thought he would try to make a sensor that could tell if your hands were near your face, he told CNN.
An astrophysicist by trade, Reardon, 27, had some electronic parts lying around and decided to try his hand at a bit of ingenious engineering.
“I was just feeling a bit bored when it came up,” he said, admitting that his invention had the opposite effect to the one he intended: Instead of making a noise when his hands were close to his face, it buzzed incessantly until he moved them to his face.
“I had a laugh and gave up temporarily,” he added. “Then I started mindlessly placing the magnets on my face. First my ear lobes, then my nostrils — like a magnetic piercing.”
At that point, Reardon had only gained himself some temporary body modifications, but things were about to get slightly more permanent.
“The problem was when I put magnets first in one nostril, then in my other nostril,” he said. “They all pinched together and the ones on my septum got stuck!”
Unable to remove them by himself, Reardon ended up heading to the local hospital.
He said he spent about an hour there, describing the facility as “pretty quiet,” as coronavirus patients are being sent to another hospital.
“The staff enjoyed it — several doctors and some nurses came to laugh at/with me,” said Reardon.
“In the end, two doctors pulled at them — one grabbing at the magnets in each nostril.”
“I was in a bit of pain while they were moving the magnets and my nose — I had made it pretty sore myself,” he said.
“But other than that I was laughing with everyone else.”
So far, Australia has had close to 5000 cases of coronavirus and 22 deaths.
In response to the outbreak, the country tightened its restrictions on movement earlier this week. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said public gatherings would be limited to two people and ordered residents to stay home, except to shop for necessities, medical care, exercise, work or education.
The entire world has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But don’t think that this going to slow down President Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border one bit.
In mid-March, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that they would construct over 150 miles of the wall in Arizona, California, and New Mexico. This is in addition to work on the wall that is continuing at more than 15 other sites.
“Wall construction has not been affected [by the coronavirus],” a CBP spokesman said in a report that was published by The Guardian.
President Trump declared a national emergency in February 2019 after encountering resistance from House Democrats over his planned wall, which was his chief campaign promise in 2016. This allowed the administration to divert funds from the US Department of Defense to fund the project, which has been deemed essential for the protection of American workers and of its ordinary citizens from crime committed by illegal immigrants.
The funds, totaling approximately $18.5 billion, are being used to build 450 to 500 miles of the wall by the end of this year. The project is being overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Construction workers involved in the project are staying at local hotels and motels, working together in teams and car-pooling on the way to work and back each day. Some of them are being paid higher salaries than usual so that they can work nights to ensure that the project is completed on time.
Border protection has now become more important than ever because of the coronavirus outbreak, with illegal immigrants feared to be bringing the virus with them when they cross into the US. In response, the border has been closed to all but essential traffic, and illegals who are caught trying to enter the US are being returned immediately to Mexico rather than being detained. This is to minimize the risk to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, as well as to the immigrants themselves, who would be forced to spend long periods of time in closed quarters together.
It is to be hoped that this level of concern with completing the wall will be maintained even after the coronavirus crisis has passed. American lives are at stake, being threatened both by the coronavirus as well as by illegal immigrants.
Xuehua Peng, also known as Edward Peng, a naturalized American citizen originally from China, was sentenced for conducting espionage on behalf of the Chinese government, the US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
Peng was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and fined $30,000 by a US District Court judge in California on Monday.
Prior to his arrest, Peng, 56, had been working as a tour guide for Chinese tourists in the San Francisco Bay Area. But when he wasn’t showing his beloved countrymen the Frisco sites, he acted as a courier for classified US national security documents and money on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s equivalent of the CIA.
According to the DOJ, in 2015 Peng was approached by an MSS agent during a trip back home to China. The agent told Peng that he could make use of his American citizenship to help the Chinese government.
Between 2015 and 2018, Peng would leave MSS money and instructions for Chinese spies at five “dead drops” in hotel rooms in San Francisco and Columbus, Georgia. He would then depart for several hours, during which time a Chinese spy would come, retrieve the MSS’ money and communiques, and leave documents behind. Peng would then return and retrieve the documents. In this way, he never had to meet with any of the spies face to face, and thus hoped to evade detection.
Peng would then take the documents with him on trips to Beijing and deliver them to the MSS.
The FBI, which grew suspicious of Peng’s activities, set up hidden cameras in the hotel rooms and filmed him picking up the documents, and also monitored his phone calls with MSS agents.
During the course of his trial, Peng pleaded guilty, confessing to voluntarily working for the MSS.
It seems ironic that for the past several years, the United States has been obsessed with Russia as the government that is supposedly intent on sabotaging the American political system from within. While actual evidence of Russian interference has been hard to come by, here we have actual proof of Chinese efforts to undermine US national security – and yet you won’t be hearing much about that in the mainstream media.
A rocket barrage killed two American soldiers, an infantryman and an airman, late on Wednesday at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.
The same attack also killed a British soldier, and twelve other troops were injured. Military spokesman US Army Colonel Myles Caggins said that an investigation of the damage inflicted in the attack is still ongoing.
This attack brings the number of American servicemen killed this week in Iraq thus far to four. Two Marine Raiders were also killed in a battle against ISIS forces on Sunday.
An Iraqi officer noted that this was the twenty-second attack on US forces in Iraq since late October.
While US officials did not accuse any specific group of carrying out the attack, Shi’ite militias backed by Iran are the likeliest culprit. One such militia, Kataib Hezbollah, carried out an attack on the US base in Kirkuk in December that killed an American military contractor. President Trump ordered an airstrike on a convoy carrying Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in retaliation, killing him, which prompted Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq in January. More than 100 American troops were injured in those attacks.
The assassination also led to the Iraqi Parliament voting to demand that all American and coalition soldiers leave the country, although that decision has yet to be ratified by the government, which is in a state of transition following the resignation of the last administration following large protests in December.
The Iranian leadership has vowed “severe revenge” for the death of General Soleimani. General Frank McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command, warned that there would be further attacks by Iran and the groups it supports against American forces and its coalition allies in testimony before the House on Tuesday.
The US currently maintains a force of approximately 5,000 soldiers supporting Iraqi government forces in the country.
Former Vice President Joe Biden had some choice words for a Michigan auto worker at a campaign stop on Tuesday.
The presidential candidate was visiting the Detroit plant where the Fiat Chrysler is produced when worker Jerry Wayne decided to ask Biden how he planned to help union workers. But he also asked him about his position on the Second Amendment.
“I also asked him how he wanted to get the vote of the working man when a lot of us wield arms,” Wayne said in an interview on Wednesday that was reported on in USA Today. “We bear arms and we like to do that.”
Video of the exchange shows Wayne accusing Biden of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right” and “take away our guns.”
Biden, whose platform includes extensive plans to tighten gun restrictions, didn’t take very kindly to Wayne’s criticism. “You’re full of shit,” he told Wayne. “I support the Second Amendment.”
Wayne pressed the issue, however, especially regarding Biden’s support for banning semi-automatic rifles, one type of which Biden mistakenly referred to as an “AR-14” (the AR-15 is a common type of rifle). Biden, visibly angry, told Wayne not to act like “such a horse’s ass.”
Biden “went off the deep end,” Wayne said of the exchange.
In spite of Biden’s harsh reaction, Wayne said he didn’t feel insulted by the former Vice President. He felt the real problem was Biden’s lack of a genuine answer. “He wanted to listen to my question and I don’t think that he was ready for it,” Wayne said.
“It was a little bit disturbing to see that a politician wants to take away my right to defend myself,” Wayne continued. “What we need to do is we need to concentrate on teaching people how to respect firearms and how to use them, not take them away.”
Wayne said that it had been an “absolute privilege and an honor to be the voice of Americans” regarding the Second Amendment. “This is a right that we need to protect with our heart and soul.”
The sanctuary county of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina is currently on course to let 1,000 criminal illegal immigrants into the interior of the U.S. after its officials ended cooperation with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Figures from the federal government have revealed that each year until Fiscal Year of 2019, Mecklenburg County would hand over to ICE between 1,000 to 1,300 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges against them.
Last December, however, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden put an end to all of that, tearing up the county’s agreement with ICE, making the county into a sanctuary jurisdiction that actively prevents criminal illegal immigrants from being repatriated back to their homelands.
Unfortunately, the county’s new policy means that roughly 1,000 criminal illegal immigrants are expected be released sometime this year. 300 illegal immigrants who would have be removed from the country by ICE will more than likely stay in the country instead.
“Sanctuary cities and counties around the country are acting as illegal incubators for criminal alien activity, harboring dangerous offenders and often releasing them back to the streets,” one federal official told journalists from Breitbart News.
“The egregious practice of local police ignoring our laws and obstructing the federal law enforcement mission of safety and security should have no place in North Carolina or anywhere else,” the official added.
Among those recently released from the county’s custody are illegal immigrants who’ve been charged with raping children and heroin trafficking, federal immigrations have revealed. Other convictions of illegal immigrants who’ve been released into the country’s interior include drunk driving, assault, possession of drugs, and larceny.
President Donald Trump has ‘every right’ to withhold aid to Ukraine, or from any country, where he thinks corruption is taking place, Republican Senator Rand Paul said over the weekend.
“Every politician in Washington is trying to manipulate Ukraine to their purposes,” the grassroots right-wing Senator from Kentucky said.
“I think we’ve gotten lost in this whole idea of quid pro quo,” Paul argued during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ over the weekend.
Transcripts from the House Democrat-led impeachment inquiry against President Trump have revealed that some administration officials think Trump withheld US military aid for Ukraine until the country opened an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who was given a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Democrats allege this constitutes proof that there was quid pro quo involved in Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
“If you’re not allowed to give aid to people who are corrupt, there are always contingencies on aid,” the Kentucky senator argued.
“Well, if it’s corruption and he believes there to be corruption, he has every right to withhold aid,” Paul said.
“Presidents have withheld aid before for corruption. I think it’s a mistake to say, ‘Oh, he withheld aid until he got what he wanted.’”
Despite his arguments in support of the president, Senator Paul, who will act as a juror in the Senate trial if Trump is impeached by the House, argued that the Trump administration was making a “mistake” in arguing that the president didn’t engage in a quid pro quo.
“Every politician in Washington other than me, virtually, is trying to manipulate Ukraine to their purposes,” he said.
“Menendez tried it, Murphy tried it, Biden tried it, Trump’s tried it — they’re all doing it. They are all trying to manipulate Ukraine to get some kind of investigation, either end an investigation or start an investigation.” he declared.
Senator Paul mentioned that he opposes sending aid to Ukraine entirely.
“I wouldn’t give them the aid because we don’t have the money,” the senator said. “We have to actually borrow the money from China to send it to Ukraine, so I’m against the aid and I think it’s a mistake to do the aid so I wouldn’t have played any of these games.”
The amount of so-called ‘asylum seekers’ pouring into the United States is set to be slashed by at least 40 percent in 2020 compared this year, where 30,000 migrants were settled throughout the country.
President Trump has authorized a cap on the ‘refugee resettlement program’ for the Fiscal Year of 2020, the Associated Press reports. The cap would permit no more than 18,000 ‘refugees’ to be resettled in the interior of the country in 2020. Once realized, this would represent an 80 percent reduction in the inflow of refugees compared to what was seen under President Obama.
Furthermore, it is conceivable that the number of so-called refugees allowed to stay in the country in 2020 could be even less than 18,000.
In the Fiscal Year of 2019 (October 1st, 2018 to September 30th, 2019), 30,000 refugees were resettled across the interior of the United States.
Of the 30,000 that were resettled, over 12,900 came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 4,900 arrived from Burma, more than 4,400 made their way from Ukraine, and close to 1,200 came from Afghanistan.
Although the majority of the resettled refugees are Christian (i.e. Catholic, Protestant, etc.), those who came from Afghanistan are Muslim.
Over fifty percent of the resettled refugees were distributed across 12 states. While Texas absorbed the most with 2,500 refugees, the states of California, New York, Washington, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky each took more than 1,000 refugees.
Official White House immigration numbers have revealed that from 2008 to 2018, the United States has permanently resettled over 1.7 million foreign nationals through its different humanitarian programs.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers close to $9 billion every five years.
A top bureaucrat for the European Union says that the 28 member bloc needs a standing army of 60,000 that could be deployed around the world if need be.
During a European Parliament hearing into his candidacy as vice president for foreign affairs and security on Monday, Josep Borrell, the EU’s incoming security chief, said: “The European Union has to learn to use the language of power.”
Borrell, a 72-year-old Spanish socialist who is set to become EU’s foreign affairs chief next month, said that the union should go further than its current 35,000 men and women who are available to be deployed worldwide.
“That’s already impressive, but we have to do more,” Borrell said. He urged EU lawmakers to “reinforce the EU’s international role and further our military capacity to act”
“The EU has to be more operational on the ground. We have to be ready to deploy forces, starting with our neighborhood,” Borrell continued.
The Spanish Eurocrat called on lawmakers in Brussels to up the number of troops available to be deployed to at least 55,000 to 60,000.
“We should pull our national sovereignties together to multiply the power of individual member states. And I am convinced that if we don’t act together, Europe will become irrelevant in the new coming world,” he added.
Last November, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of a “real European army” to deal with the Russian threat and to rid the EU of its dependence on the US. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to back the idea and enthusiastically echo Macron’s sentiments.
Others in the bloc haven’t been so keen to accept the idea. The UK, Visegrád countries (V4), and Romania have all voiced that NATO should remain the institution that guarantees security on the continent.
On Tuesday, Former Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared that she could beat President Trump ‘again’ in 2020 if she decided to make another run at the White House.
“Maybe there does need to be a rematch. I mean, obviously, I can beat him again,” Clinton told Judy Woodruff, the host of PBS News hour Judy, in an apparent reference to her winning the popular vote in 2016.
Clinton and her daughter Chelsea talked with Woodruff on topics ranging from the president, impeachment, and their new book, “Gutsy Women.”
“It truly is remarkable how obsessed he remains with me,” Clinton said, “But this latest tweet is so typical of him. Nothing has been more examined and looked at than my e-mails. We all know that. So he’s either lying or delusional or both … so maybe there does need to be a rematch. Obviously I can beat him again.”
Trump taunted “crooked Hillary” earlier in the day on Twitter, saying: “I think that crooked Hillary Clinton should try to enter the race to try and steal it away from uber-left Elizabeth Warren. Only one condition: The crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors, including how and why she deleted 33,000 e-mails AFTER getting ‘C’ subpoena.”
Clinton continued, saying, “But just seriously, I don’t understand. I don’t think anybody understands what motivates him other than personal grievance, other than seeking adulation. I said during the campaign, there was no other Donald Trump. What you saw was what you were going to get, and I think a lot of Americans understandably thought, oh, no, that can’t possibly be the case. Once he’s in office, he will certainly moderate his behavior. Well, we see, no, he hasn’t.”
Although Clinton has said several times that she wouldn’t run for president for the third time in 2020, she has fueled rumors by making a ton of public appearances recently because of her book.
In recent tweets, she further intensified the idea of her running in 2020 when she responded to Trump’s taunts in a tweet, saying: “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”
A new Rasmussen poll released earlier this week revealed that Trump and Clinton would be neck and neck in a 2020 rematch, with each candidate receiving 45 percent of the vote. The rest of the potential voters were ‘undecided’.
However, in the same poll, only 18 percent of respondents said that Clinton should enter the race.
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