News Burst 27 September 2024
> Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children. He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder. The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada’s mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down. Hakamada’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday. Hakamada fought for decades to clear his name and said it was sweet to hear the words “not guilty” in court.
> The Taliban has started to tighten its grip on Afghan men after imposing bans on women living in Afghanistan. Afghan men, who are now the new target of the Taliban, will no longer be allowed to appear “Western.” Afghan women have faced increasingly severe restrictions on their personal freedoms and clothing since the Taliban took power three years ago. However, men in urban areas have mostly been able to live freely. The last four weeks have brought significant changes for men in the country as well. New laws enacted at the end of August mandate that men must grow beards to a fist’s length. As Taliban begins restricting Afghan men, some regret restrictions on women.
> The US and UK masterminded the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in an act of economic warfare against their EU allies, Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service has claimed. The assessment released on Thursday, on the second anniversary of the undersea bombing, detailed an alleged effort by Washington and London to interfere in the investigation and blame another party. The intelligence “definitively points to the pipeline attack being an act of international terrorism and an act of economic war [by the US and UK] against European allies, primarily the Federal Republic of Germany,” the statement said. The SVR claimed that Washington and London have been conducting a sustained campaign to “remove the issue of the Nord Stream sabotage from international agenda,” ramping up their efforts in August.
> Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) does not exist and was invented by Big Pharma in conspiracy with government regulatory agencies to hook young and vulnerable children on lucrative psychiatric drugs, according to leading American behavioral biologist Dr. Richard Saul. “After 50 years of practising medicine and seeing thousands of patients demonstrating symptoms of ADHD, I have reached the conclusion there is no such thing as ADHD,” explains Dr. Saul. “This so-called condition has apparently spread like wildfire across the globe in recent years, with a huge increase in its diagnosis and medication,” Dr Saul continued. “More than 4 per cent of adults and 11 per cent of children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD.” We all have scatterbrained moments where we struggle to get organized, zone out, or have an angry outburst – all signs of ADHD. Many assume medication’s the answer, which explains the uptick in children being treated.
> The late founder of the Wagner private military company, Evgeny Prigozhin, secretly used Western banks to funnel money to support his operations in Africa, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. Citing leaked documents allegedly obtained by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies think tank, the newspaper claimed that a Sudanese mining company closely linked to Wagner, sent money in 2017 from a local bank account to a Chinese vendor via JPMorgan Chase. The Sudanese company, Meroe Gold, reportedly bought diesel generators and spare parts from a Chinese company the same year via a bank which is part of the British HSBC Group. The FT noted that there was no evidence that HSBC and JPMorgan were aware that the alleged payments benefited Wagner.
> The founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has told French investigators that he earns just one Emirati dirham, or $0.27, per year, Le Monde reported on Wednesday, adding that the disclosure had puzzled interrogators. While the tech entrepreneur apparently pays himself almost nothing, Forbes estimates Durov’s fortune at $15.5 billion, making him the 122nd wealthiest person in the world. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which lists Durov in 306th place, his personal capital amounts to $9.07 billion. Despite being a billionaire, Durov has quite ascetic habits, Le Monde reported, noting that his posts on social media have promoted a life without coffee, alcohol, meat, dairy products, and medication, as well as taking ice baths and meditating. The disclosure about his annual paycheck was reportedly made in response to a question about Durov’s income while in police custody in Paris at the end of last month.
> Israel is on the offensive. Since Monday morning, the IDF has carried out more than 800 strikes on military targets in Lebanon in its pursuit of Hezbollah, a Shiite political party and paramilitary group linked to Iran. Last week, Israel conducted a precision strike in Beirut’s Dahiya neighborhood, killing the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil, along with other top commanders. According to a recent poll conducted by channel 14, associated with the country’s right, 71 percent of Israelis backed a military operation in Lebanon. Only 18 percent rejected the move. Another survey showed that 65 percent of Israelis believed their country would win the war.
> A US federal judge has rejected the EPA’s argument that the exact level at which fluoride is hazardous is too unclear to determine if the chemical presents an unreasonable risk. In a decision that could, or should, end the practice of water fluoridation in the US, the judge ruled on Tuesday that the agency must take regulatory action as water fluoridation at current levels does pose an “unreasonable risk” of reduced IQ in children. The Defender reports: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can no longer ignore that risk, and must take regulatory action, Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California wrote in the long-awaited landmark decision. More than 200 million Americans drink water treated with fluoride at the “optimal” level of 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L). However, Chen ruled that a preponderance of scientific evidence shows this level of fluoride exposure may damage human health, particularly that of pregnant mothers and young children.
> British Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer appears to have confused hostages with sausages. While speaking at the the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Starmer demanded that the Palestinian group release the “sausages” being held in Gaza. “I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the sausages…..” the PM said to applause from the crowd. He quickly corrected himself, making clear that he was actually talking about “hostages.” One commentator argued that Hamas would have no problem returning the “sausages” as they are Muslims and don’t eat pork.
> Facebook built a special ‘censorship portal’ that gave members of the Biden Administration ‘VIP access’ to the platform’s censorship tools. According to newly leaked documents, the Big Tech giant wasn’t just policing what it thought was “misinformation” on COVID and vaccines; it was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s wrongthink department. Reclaimthenet.org reports: Let’s rewind to 2021, the peak of the pandemic drama. The public was dealing with a mutating narrative on what constituted “the truth.” At the time, the administration faced heavy criticism for overseeing a clampdown on dissent. Social media platforms, like Facebook, took on the noble mantle of censoring anything that didn’t align with the latest CDC talking points.
> Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he no longer supports the Democratic Party and instead identifies as libertarian. Amid a Trump victory looking increasingly likely this November, Zuckerberg has decided to distance himself from supporting government regulation and social justice initiatives. Sources claim he has distanced himself from left-leaning activism within Meta and is desperate to improve relations with former President Donald Trump. Breitbart.com reports: The sources added that Zuckerberg is also trying to repair his relationship with former President Donald Trump, speaking to him twice in one-on-one cordial phone calls over the summer.
Democrat Rep. Stacey Plaskett declared on Wednesday that the purpose of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI is to “terrorize” former President Donald Trump and his “disgusting supporters.” During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on government weaponization, Plaskett accused the Weaponization Subcommittee as being set up in order to “eradicate” the DOJ and FBI, which would leave Trump and his supporters unmolested. “We’re having these hearings so that you become immune, you become inured to the notion of the removal of the FBI and DOJ, so that those agencies are no longer there to serve as a check against white nationalism, great replacement theorists, Christian nationalists, white fragility, fascists, and the twice-impeached convicted felon, former president and would-be dictator Donald Trump,” Plaskett angrily stated.
> U.S. Customs and Borer Patrol has sounded the alarm about the large numbers of child sex trafficking victims who they say are being drugged and smuggled into the United States for elite pedophiles. There have been at least two separate instances in just a matter of days in which Border Patrol identified smugglers carrying birth certificates for multiple children to whom they are not related. Agents say they are seeing a rise in the number of these suspicious adults doing this as the mules “recycle” children for sex trafficking purposes. Naturalnews.com reports: “A few years ago when they were coming in en masse, we had to let family units in,” one Border Patrol agent said about the matter. “People kept coming in and after a while we noticed the kids were the same, but the parents were different. They were recycling the kids.” “I hate thinking about it because there were thousands of kids and who knows where they all ended up.”
> Coca-Cola is refusing to allow customers to customize a can with the word “Jesus”, deeming it offensive, but allows use of the words “Satan” and “Allah.” A viral video showing a man’s attempt to personalize a can of Coca-Cola with the phrase “Jesus loves you” has sparked outrage online, with some Christians calling for a boycott of the beverage company. Texas man, Antwoine Hill, was visiting the Coca-Cola store over the weekend, using a machine that allows customers to customize their canned soda. Hill was able to write the words Allah, Buddha, and Satan, but the machine refused to allow him to write the word Jesus. Hill filmed the incident and posted the video to his Facebook account, where it went viral, sparking outrage among many Christians who are fed up with being discriminated against by major corporations concerned with maintaining a woke image.
> The universe appears to have sent us an early Christmas present: the large asteroid that tumbled safely past Earth last week was, in fact, two asteroids melded into one object that resembles a snowman. The asteroid, named 2024 ON, zipped past Earth on Sept. 17 at 19,842 mph (31,933 kph), which is roughly 26 times the speed of sound. The space rock is huge — 1150 feet (350 meters) long, about the size of a skyscraper — but it safely floated past Earth at a distance of 620,000 miles (1 million kilometers), aka over 2.5 times the average distance between the moon and Earth. “This asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous, but it does not pose a hazard to Earth for the foreseeable future,” according to a recent news release from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Recent measurements of the space rock using the Goldstone Solar System Radar in California “have allowed scientists to greatly reduce the uncertainties in the asteroid’s distance from Earth and in its future motion for many decades.”
> NASA scientists have calculated that Earth will capture a “second moon” on Sunday (Sept. 29). The “mini-moon” comes in the form of the tiny asteroid 2024 PT5, which usually orbits the sun as part of a small asteroid belt that follows Earth. While Earth’s primary companion, the moon, has lingered around our planet for around 4 billion years since its formation in the solar system’s infancy, this asteroid will be a temporary fixture that won’t even see the year out. “According to the latest data available from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, the temporary capture will start at 15:54 EDT (1954 UTC) and will end at 11:43 EDT (1543 UTC) on November 25,” mini-moon event expert and Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com on Wednesday (Sept. 25).
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