Throughout the drama of his U.S. Senate testimony on Thursday, James Comey sat ramrod-straight, his mouth set, all business. It was the posture of a longtime law-enforcement official and former FBI director, someone used to keeping matters close to the vest. But even the steady, crisp rhythm of his answers could not hide what lay beneath the surface: Comey's dismissal by President Donald Trump last month wounded and angered him. Beyond testifying to conversations he said he had with Trump concerning the federal probe into ties between Trump's campaign and Russian officials, Comey time and again told the Senate committee before him and viewers across the country he not only has a harsh opinion of the president's purported conduct, but also of his character. Just minutes into his testimony, Comey said the president and his aides had chosen to defame him by spreading lies about his job performance, attempting to shred a reputation carefully built during 20 years of government service. "Those were lies, plain and simple, and I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them and that the American people were told them," he said. Later, Comey testified he began documenting his conversations with the president because of what he called "the nature of the person." "I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting," Comey said. Trump, uncharacteristically, stayed silent during Comey's testimony, despite earlier suggestions from White House aides that he might take to Twitter to respond. He never did, ceding the stage, for the moment, to his nemesis. He left rebuttals to his son, Donald Trump, Jr., who defended Trump on Twitter, and to his outside lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who denied the president had ever pressured Comey to drop the FBI's probe into Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. In response to questions from senators, Comey repeatedly cast Trump as a boss or "patron" trying to secure his loyalty, something that Comey said made him "uneasy." At one point, Comey was asked why his version of events should be believed over the president's. "I've tried to be open, fair, transparent and accurate," he said, encouraging senators to examine the two men's "consistency track record, demeanor, record over time, that sort of thing." Referring to a Trump comment on social media about the possible existence of tapes that could provide proof of their conversations, Comey said he was so rankled he decided to hand memos of his interactions with the president to a close friend to leak to the media. "I've seen the tweet about the tapes," Comey said. "Lordy, I hope there are tapes." At the White house, in keeping with Trump's silence, his aides played down the day's events. "It's a regular Thursday at the White House," Sarah Sanders, the deputy press secretary, told reporters, as televisions in the West Wing blasted Comey's testimony. Trump watched at least part of the hearing with his outside legal team, in a dining room at the White House, but Sanders said she did not know if he had seen much of it. Sanders took umbrage when asked if, as Comey had suggested, the president had lied. "I can definitively say the president is not a liar. I think it's frankly insulting that question would be asked," she said. After Comey's testimony, Trump delivered a brief speech to a friendly audience at a conference of religious leaders in Washington where he did not mention the controversy. Throughout the hotel ballroom where the event was staged, attendees expressed support for the Republican Trump and distaste for Democrats and the news media. "I feel he's doing a wonderful job for our country," said Donna Hubers of Baltimore, who was checking her phone for Comey updates. There were some lighter, and literary, moments in Comey's testimony. He recalled at one point that he had to give up a dinner date with his wife because Trump asked to meet him at the White House. That was one of the meetings that Trump allegedly used to pressure Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn. "In retrospect, I love spending time with my wife, and I wish I would have been there that night," he said on Thursday, drawing laughs from the senators. Comey also reached into English history to boost his portrayal of Trump. He was asked by Senator Angus King, an independent, whether he took the president's references to the Flynn probe in the Oval Office as a directive to drop the matter. Comey replied with a quotation attributed to King Henry II of England, who was at odds with Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. "Yes. It rings in my ear as, well, 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?'" "I was just going to quote that," Senator King said. "And the next day, he (Becket) was killed."


Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face a second trial on Friday for genocide, a lawyer for victims said, reviving a case against the strongman accused of ordering massacres of Maya Indians during a long civil war. Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala in 1982 and 1983 after a military coup, was convicted of genocide four years ago along with another military officer but the ruling was overturned. A Supreme Court tribunal will hear the case, Edgar P rez, a lawyer for the relatives of victims who have led a years long campaign against Rios Montt, said on Wednesday. The 91-year-old retired general was diagnosed with senile dementia in 2015. He will be represented in court by two lawyers and will not make a personal appearance. The lawyers were not immediately available for comment. The new trial will revisit the earlier accusations that Rios Montt ordered massacres leading to deaths of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayan Indians during his 17-month rule. Rios Montt maintains his innocence, saying junior officers acted without his knowledge. Guatemala s 1960-1996 civil war led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people and was the bloodiest among the Cold War conflicts that tore through Latin America when U.S.-backed military government battled leftist governments and rebels.


José Estrella pulled a handkerchief to cover his face as he began to speak. The air around the morgue in Mocoa was filled with the smell of the dead, he said, who included his sister and two nephews. "Now the bodies are decomposing because they are in open air," said Mr. Estrella, his voice cracking as he spoke by telephone. He was unable to retrieve the bodies, he said the morgue, overloaded with the dead, was understaffed. The bodies were piling up on Monday morning in Mocoa, a Colombian city where mud and debris had made it impossible in places to see that anyone had ever lived there. Rescue workers continued to scour the rubble for the dead. And family members, like Mr. Estrella, pleaded for the bodies of loved ones so they could offer them a proper burial. The provincial capital in the southern mountains of the country was devastated by a flood of water and debris on Saturday that has so far claimed at least 262 lives. The heavy rains caused nearby rivers to rise, generating a torrent that leveled homes and neighborhoods. "The putrefaction is beginning," said Nixon Piaguaje, a local radio journalist. Rescue teams, some covered in mud, waded through a landscape of stone and earth in what in many cases had become a search for bodies rather than survivors. Hundreds of relief workers arrived in the town to distribute supplies. President Juan Manuel Santos acknowledged "bottlenecks" in the relief process, but said more help would be arriving soon and promised a full reconstruction of the city. Edgar Ruiz, an indigenous leader, expressed frustration in a phone interview after trudging through the mud searching for lost members from his community, the Siona people. So far, he said, he had located six families alive from his group, but eight more were unaccounted for. "We went to the health centers and the morgue as well, but they were nowhere," he said. Mr. Santos said that at least 43 of the dead were children. "We send our prayers to all of them," he said. "To their families we send condolences and the sympathy of the entire country. " Colombian television transmitted images of loved ones still searching for lost children in the rubble. "I did everything that was possible: I told my son don't let go, and he said he wouldn't," Yuri Narváez told Colombian television station Caracol TV. "But the current came and we lost him. " Mr. Piaguaje, the radio journalist, said there were so many bodies that there was no one to bury them all. "When someone finds a cadaver, they take them to the cemetery and just leave them there," he said. He said scores of bodies were still lying in open air. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Estrella, the man who was unable to get the bodies of his relatives in the morgue, recalled rushing to the neighborhood of San Miguel after hearing the mudslide to see if his family members were still alive. Instead he looked on as rescue workers pulled out their bodies: First his sister, who lay near the ruins of her home, then her two daughters, one 8, the other just 5 months. He said he had since been haunted by the smell of the dead. "You smell it for hundreds of feet," he said. "There are people who faint when they open the bags and the bodies are putrefied. "


If it were up to this President, we wouldn t have any arms to bear U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday said it will no longer require incoming U.S. citizens to pledge that they will bear arms on behalf of the United States or perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces as part of the naturalization process.Those lines are in the Oath of Allegiance that people recite as they become U.S. citizens. But USCIS said people may be able to exclude those phrases for reasons related to religion or if they have a conscientious objection.USCIS said people with certain religious training or with a deeply held moral or ethical code may not have to say the phrases as they are naturalized.The agency said people don t have to belong to a specific church or religion to use this exemption, and may attest to U.S. officials administering the oath that they have these beliefs.


A Kenyan court on Monday awarded a young woman four million shillings in damages after she was strip-searched by police who said they were looking for drugs. The incident in August 2015 provoked an outcry in the East African country after images of the half-naked 18-year-old schoolgirl were posted on social media. She pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana shortly after the incident and was sentenced to 18 months on probation. In the lawsuit she later filed jointly with a child rights group, the young woman said the photos humiliated her and sought legal compensation. Kenyan high court judge John Mativo said in his ruling that the student was entitled to the four million shillings ($38,815) because her constitutional rights to dignity had been violated. The student had been traveling with more than 40 others on a bus home for the holidays when she was stopped by the police. The court s ruling is a rare victory in the East African country s legal system against the police. Although no police officers were tried or found guilty in the case, the ruling was an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. A government civilian body exists to oversee the police, but few officers are charged and convictions are extremely rare.


France has decided to arm its surveillance drones in West Africa as part of counter-terrorism operations against Islamist militants, Defense Minister Florence Parly said on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron has made fighting Islamist militants his primary foreign policy objective and the move to armed drones fits into a more aggressive policy at a time when it looks increasingly unlikely Paris will be able to withdraw from the region in the medium to long-term. France currently has five unarmed Reaper reconnaissance drones positioned in Niger s capital Niamey to support its 4,000-strong Barkhane counter-terrorism operation in Africa, and one in France. Beyond our borders, the enemy is more furtive, more mobile, disappears into the vast Sahel desert and dissimulates himself amidst the civilian population, Parly said in a speech to the military. Facing this, we cannot remain static. Our methods and equipment must adapt. It is with this in mind that I have decided to launch the process to arm our intelligence and surveillance drones. A further six of 12 Reaper drones, built by U.S. firm General Atomics and ordered after France s 2013 intervention in Mali to eventually replace its EADS-made Harfang drones, are due to be delivered by 2019. The defense ministry said on Tuesday the new drones would be delivered with Hellfire missiles while the existing six would be armed by 2020, possibly with European munitions. Previous French administrations have shied away from purchasing armed drones, fearing a possible increase in civilian casualties. Al Qaeda s north African wing AQIM and related Islamist groups were largely confined to the Sahara desert until they hijacked a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg separatists in Mali in 2012, and then swept south. French forces intervened the following year to prevent them taking Mali s capital, Bamako, but they have since gradually expanded their reach across the region, launching high-profile attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, as well as much more frequent, smaller attacks on military targets. At the end of July, at the military base in Niger, officers and pilots had told Reuters it was imperative to arm the drones to be more efficient and quick in tackling jihadist groups. In the future, armed drones will enable us to accompany surveillance ... with the capacity to strike at the opportune moment. We will be able to gain in efficiency and limit the risk of collateral damage, Parly said. France is also working with Germany, Italy and Spain to develop a European drone, which is expected to be ready by 2025.


President-elect Donald Trump will not revive his predecessor's stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in any form, but will quickly pursue bilateral trade agreements, a Trump transition policy adviser said. "TPP is dead. I cannot stress that more strongly," said the adviser, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly for the administration that takes office on Jan. 20. "TPP, or a multilateral agreement that looks like TPP but is called something else, is emphatically dead." On Wednesday, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he was not opposed to President Barack Obama's 12-country Pacific Rim trade deal but shared some of Trump's views "on whether the agreement that was negotiated serves all of America's interests at best." Speaking by phone late on Thursday, the Trump adviser said Tillerson was expressing some personal views on free trade theory. The adviser said the administration was not going to pursue multilateral trade deals. "You will be shocked by the speed at which bilateral agreements begin to materialize," the adviser said. Britain has expressed strong interest in a bilateral trade deal with the United States once it exits the European Union. Official spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not respond to Reuters' requests for further comment. The adviser said he would not rule out declaring China a currency manipulator or levying tariffs on Chinese goods as a means of reducing massive U.S. trade deficits with China. He declined to speculate how quickly a currency designation could come, adding that the issue needed further review. The Trump policy adviser said the new administration is determined to reverse years of Chinese trade practices that have "hollowed out" the U.S. manufacturing base. "You have to understand the view of this administration that China is essentially perpetrating an economic war, they're already engaged in a trade war against us," the adviser said.


U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said one of the top goals of the Trump administration's tax plan is to help the middle class, but he could not guarantee that every middle-class family would receive a tax cut. "It is our objective that the entire middle class will get a tax cut," Mnuchin said on ABC's "This Week" program. "You cannot make guarantees because every single person's taxes are different, people take advantage of different things." President Donald Trump last week outlined his plan, which includes reducing the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent, establishing a new 25 percent tax rate for pass-through businesses and lowering the top income tax rate for individuals to 35 percent. A report on Friday from the non-profit Washington-based Tax Policy Center found that taxpayers in the top 1 percent income bracket - above $730,000 - would receive about 50 percent of the total benefit from the overhaul, with their after-tax income forecast to increase an average of 8.5 percent. The group said about 12 percent of taxpayers would face an average tax increase of roughly $1,800. This includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, as most itemized deductions, including for state and local taxes, would be repealed. Mnuchin and other Trump administration officials defended the plan, saying it is not aimed at helping the rich, while acknowledging the details were in flux. "The objective of the president is that rich people don't get tax cuts," Mnuchin said. "As we go through this process, we will explain to the American public how this works." Mnuchin was also asked on whether a proposed new rate of 25 percent for so-called pass-through businesses would end up being exploited by wealthy people looking to lower their tax bills. About 95 percent of American businesses are pass-throughs such as sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. The name comes from the profits and losses of such businesses that pass through directly to their owners, unlike public corporations. Mnuchin said the administration would seek to put "guard rails" around rules for pass-throughs to avoid people using them as a loophole. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told CNN's "State of the Union" program: "This really is about the middle class and the corporate tax rate, for the president." Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, said no one knows how the plan would affect Americans because it has not been finalized. "When people come out with these definitive statements of what the tax plan is going to do, or what the tax plan is not going to do, I find it hard to believe, because we don't even know what the tax plan is going to look like in its entirety," Cohn said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" program. Mnuchin said the administration hoped to have the tax overhaul legislation passed in December.


By karencole  Posted Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 10:20am EDT  Having a great smile can say so much about someone. This is the first thing when making a conversation with someone. If your teeth are not white enough, it may greatly lower your self-esteem, and you lack confidence. In the long run, you end up losing opportunities, and you are unable to express yourself. There are so many people with discolored teeth, and they have spent a fortune in dental visits, yet there are several ways that they can be controlled by below home remedies . Watch what you eat.  Ensure that you frequently eat crunchy fruits as well as vegetable . Fruits such as apples, carrots act as a natural toothbrush. They are important in removing any bacteria that may be present in the mouth. Also, these fruits remove any food particles that may be left in the mouth. They are also useful in scrubbing any stain that may be on the surface of the teeth.  Also, consider taking strawberries. They are known to contain a Malic acid enzyme which is important in removing any stains on the teeth surface thus whitening the teeth. While eating them, you should chew them thoroughly to ensure that they are brushing the teeth. Always brush and floss your teeth on a daily basis.  Brushing and flossing your teeth regularly helps a lot in avoiding the formation of plaque. It is recommended that you should brush and floss at least twice a day. The time taken to brush the teeth may not mean much but it is the quality and how well you do it that matters. While brushing, ensure that u reach the surfaces that are behind your teeth as well as the back molars. The bottom line is removing any food particles and bacteria that may facilitate the formation of plaque. Use the oil pulling method.  This method is quite common with the Indian community. It helps in improving their oral health and cleansing their bodies. For this method, it entails moving a tablespoon of oil in your mouth for a few minutes while pulling it in between your teeth. After about 20 minutes, spit the oil and clean your mouth using plenty of water. Doing this frequently can go a long way in whitening your teeth thus better oral health . Use of a mixture of baking soda and lemon.  This method is used by so many people in whitening the teeth. The mixture has a reaction that often results in brighter teeth. However, you should be very careful in ensuring that the mixture doesn't stay in your mouth for long without brushing as it will result in enamel erosion.  By following the above natural home remedies, you can rest assured that you will have whiter teeth. Ensure practice these tips frequently.  Author Bio: Karen Cole is working as a freelance writer from last 4 years. Currently, she is doing research on oral health and working with some dentists of USA . You might also like…


The GOP tent continues to get smaller as the first House Republican has decided to vote for Hillary Clinton against the divisive Donald Trump.New York GOP Rep. Richard Hanna, unlike many of his Republican colleagues, has a conscience. Therefore, he can t hold his nose and support the Republican nominee.Many Republicans continue to support Trump even though he has made blatantly racist comments and preached hate on the campaign trail. But Hanna has had enough.In an open letter written for Syracuse.com, Hanna ripped Trump:Months ago I publicly said I could never support Trump. My reasons were simple and personal. I found him profoundly offensive and narcissistic but as much as anything, a world-class panderer, anything but a leader. Little more than a changing mirror of those he speaks to. I never expect to agree with whoever is president, but at a minimum the president needs to consistently display those qualities I have preached to my two children: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect.I do not expect perfection, but I do require more than the embodiment of at least a short list of the seven deadly sins.Then Hanna slammed the Republican Party for alienating a large swath of Americans while becoming incapable of nominating a candidate who is electable:I have long held the belief that the Republican Party is becoming increasingly less capable of nominating a person who is electable as president. The primary process is so geared toward the party s political base, which ignores the fact that we have largely alienated women, Hispanics, the LGBT community, young voters and many others in general.Hanna went on to call Trump deeply flawed and blasted him for the way he has treated John McCain and for the way he is treating Humayun Khan s family now. Hanna is ashamed that his party continues to still support Trump even though he is insulting military families and veterans across the country.And that why he is throwing his support and most importantly, his vote -to Hillary Clinton.Secretary Clinton has issues that depending on where one stands can be viewed as great or small. But she stands and has stood for causes bigger than herself for a lifetime. That matters. Mrs. Clinton has promoted many of the issues I have been committed to over the years including expanding education and supporting women s health care.While I disagree with her on many issues, I will vote for Mrs. Clinton. I will be hopeful and resolute in my belief that being a good American who loves his country is far more important than parties or winning and losing. I trust she can lead. All Republicans may not like the direction, but they can live to win or lose another day with a real candidate. Our response to the public s anger and the need to rebuild requires complex solutions, experience, knowledge and balance. Not bumper sticker slogans that pander to our disappointment, fear and hate.Now that one Republican in Congress has the balls to vote for Hillary in rejection of Trump, how many others will do the same?


With more than 20 nominees now selected, Donald Trump's cabinet appears much like the president-elect himself: mostly older, white males, many of them wealthy, who see themselves as risk-takers and deal-makers and prize action over deliberation. Trump, who says Washington is "broken" and controlled by special interests, has largely eschewed technocrats with long government experience. Instead, he has built a team of bosses. Trump's roster of agency heads and advisers conspicuously lacks intellectuals, lawyers, and academics of the sort sought by some past presidents. In their place are titans of business and finance from the likes of Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs and no fewer than three retired generals in key positions. Commentary: Mr. Trump, here's what other presidents learned from the CIA U.S. intelligence agencies feud with Republicans over Russian hacking Obama points finger at Putin for cyber attacks on U.S. election Many of them are people used to getting their way but will now have a boss to answer to - Trump - while navigating the sometimes frustrating and sprawling bureaucracy of the U.S. government. The incoming Trump administration is poised to undo as much of President Barack Obama's accomplishments as possible, while also attempting to advance a conservative policy agenda in areas such as taxes and healthcare. A former senior U.S. official who knows Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO who is Trump's nominee for secretary of state, and Marine General James Mattis, Trump's pick for defense secretary, predicted a massive clash of egos in the cabinet. Tillerson and Mattis are "accustomed to dominating whatever space they find themselves in, and that probably will now include the Situation Room and even the Oval Office." Trump's transition team has said the cabinet is intended to be a mix of experienced Washington hands and newcomers. But former presidents who brought in outside blood have at times seen political neophytes make costly errors, experts said. Of the 21 cabinet members and White House advisers chosen to date by Trump, 16 are white men. There are four women, none of whom hold what might be considered a top-tier agency post. There is one African-American, one Asian-American and one Indian-American. There are no Hispanics. Like the real-estate magnate who chose them, several have no government experience. Others have been hostile toward the agencies they will lead if the U.S. Senate confirms them early next year. Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said Trump is building a cabinet in his own image: blunt-talkers with real-world experience. "Surrounding yourself with military guys and money guys sends a certain message," Zelizer said. "A certain kind of cutthroat aggressive dealmaker is how [Trump] imagines himself to be." Obama, who leaves office in January, relied on experienced hands to form his cabinet in 2008. He named his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, as his secretary of state. Robert Gates, who served the previous administration, remained at the Pentagon, and Obama made longtime Justice Department official Eric Holder attorney general. Some of Trump's picks do have similar experience, and he has packed his on-the-ground transition teams at various agencies with government veterans and ex-lobbyists, a Reuters review found earlier this month. The newcomers to Washington will rise to the administrative challenge, said those who know them. Republican Representative Tom Price, Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is "decisive by nature," said fellow Republican lawmaker Tom Cole. He credited Price's career as a surgeon, which is also the former profession of Ben Carson, Trump's choice for secretary of housing and urban development. Carson, said Henry Brem, a neurosurgeon who worked with Carson at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has a "cool head" and is unafraid to give strong opinions. "He's a gentleman, he speaks his mind, he has great ideas – and nobody in the world intimidates him." Rick Perry, Trump's choice for energy secretary, served three terms as governor of Texas and had to "balance a very conservative and increasingly ideological grassroots (support base) with a very influential business community," said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "Whether he can do that do that in a bureaucratic setting, in an environment as competitive as a cabinet with a lot of obviously large egos, I think is another question," Henson said. Several of Trump's picks have never held any sort of government post and have little, if any, background in policy-making, including Tillerson, Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, Commerce pick Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs executive who would chair Trump's economic council. In 2008, Mnuchin purchased IndyMac, a lender that failed during the financial crisis and helped transform it into OneWest, now a thriving retail bank in southern California. Kevin Kelly, a managing partner at Recon Capital Partners, an investment firm in Stamford, Connecticut, said that kind of real-world savvy could make government more effective. Those with high-level corporate experience are used to having to please shareholders, board members, employees, and the community, Kelly said. "It takes a very precise and dedicated person to deliver across those constituencies." The outsider approach hasn't always worked. In 2001, President George W. Bush's treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, the former chief executive of aluminum producer Alcoa Inc, rattled markets with a series of careless remarks that seemed to herald economic policy shifts that differed with the White House's stance. He ultimately was fired. "Management of large, public agencies is really difficult and requires bringing in experienced and knowledgeable people and working in ways that doesn't alienate people," said Thomas Mann, an expert on governance at the Brookings Institution. Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to the Trump transition, has acknowledged that too much inexperience could be harmful to Trump's young administration. "Washington is a very healthy immunological system," he said. "You'll see a full-blown organ rejection if you put too many status-quo disruptors in Washington."


The outcome of local elections in Sicily has further weakened the ruling party of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and strengthened the populist 5-Star Movement s lead, a poll conducted after the regional vote showed. Based on the IPSOS poll published in Saturday s Corriere della Sera, a center-right coalition would win next year s general election with 253 seats while the 5-Star would have 173 and Renzi s Democratic Party 164 together with a smaller ally, leading to a hung parliament. As Italy nears a national vote it must hold by May 2018, concerns are mounting it may leave the country ungovernable. The poll conducted on Nov. 8-9, showed the 5-Star Movement now leads with 29.3 percent of preferences while the Democratic Party stands at 24.3 percent, having lost six percentage points in six months. Italy has just introduced a new electoral system that is expected to handicap the anti-establishment 5-Star favoring instead mainstream political blocs. The voting system - a mix of proportional representation and first-past-the-post - will benefit parties that form pre-election coalitions, something the 5-Star has always ruled out. Seen as a dry run for next year s nationwide election, the Sicilian ballot held on Nov. 5 marked a strong political comeback for Silvio Berlusconi, handing government of the island to a center-right bloc backed by the four-times prime minister. Berlusconi s Forza Italia party had 16.1 percent of preferences according to the poll. The anti-immigrant Northern League another 15.3 percent and smaller center-right party Fratelli d Italia 5.1 percent. Half of the respondents in the poll said Renzi had been weakened by the Sicilian vote and should not run for premier again, while 32 percent thought he had remained the best option for the Democratic Party. Renzi stepped down as prime minister after voters rejected his landmark constitutional reform in December last year. Half of the people polled said they thought the center-right would not be able to stay united once in power.


Saudi Arabia s King Salman discussed the most prominent developments in the region in a telephone call from the Turkish president, the Saudi state news agency reported, after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem. The agency gave no further details on the discussions. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam s holiest sites, and regional Muslim power Turkey have both warned against any attempt to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital or move the embassy to city.


The editorial board of a Detroit newspaper wrote a frantic piece to its readers, calling President Donald Trump's immigration plans "a moral stain. "[The editors of the Detroit Free Press claim Trump's promise to secure the Border is an "attack America and American values": Trump's vision for American immigration, egged on by a slew of lawmakers, is an attack on America and American values — on undocumented residents, sure, but also on the millions of American immigrants here lawfully. This kind of targeted enforcement marks out Americans, regardless of immigration status, as different, other, suspect. It's a clear demarcation of whom Trump and his cohort consider real Americans. The Detroit Free Press editorial board goes on to say that "the idea that a border wall would halt or even pause illegal immigration — much less the idea that Mexico will volunteer payment for such a wall — is absurd. " However, Trump has proposed a 20 percent tax on imports coming into the U. S. from Mexico which would serve as a payment from Mexico for the border wall, as Breitbart News reported. Likewise, the claim that walls do not serve to secure borders has been challenged by the National Border Patrol Council, which has heralded Trump's immigration plans, as Breitbart Texas reported. "We know we won't have a wall along the 2, 000 miles of border," the President for the Local 2455 of the National Border Patrol Council Hector Garza said. "What we will have is a wall where it is needed. That barrier with proper manpower, resources, technology and other tools will be effective. But most important, for the first time we have a president that wants to secure the border. " The editorial board also wrote that Trump tapped into "bigoted fear" over immigration: But Trump gained a lot of his support by manipulating truth about America's immigration challenges, by painting a picture of Latino and Muslim immigrants as, broadly, leeches and potential terrorists. That's what his policies are about. That's the bigoted fear he tapped into. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has found that illegal immigrants are somewhat of a drain on American social services, costing about $113 billion for them to live in the country, as Breitbart Texas reported. Ending the editorial, the Detroit Free Press calls on residents and citizens to be a "resistance" to Trump, writing, "there is undoubtedly much more to come. Which means the protests over his early actions may need to take a turn toward another tactic: resistance. " John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged world powers on Friday to get behind a joint Russian-Chinese roadmap for settling the crisis over North Korea s weapons program. Speaking at a conference on non-proliferation in Moscow, Lavrov said that the break-up of a deal on Iran s nuclear program would send an alarming message about international security mechanisms, and could impact the situation on the Korean peninsula.


Justice Department deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben will assist Robert Mueller and he s no slacker. He has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court so his resume is worthy of joining the investigation into possible coordination between Trump s associates and Russian officials. Donald Trump had better stock up on aspirin because team Mueller is going to be all up in his business. The move signals that Mueller may be seeking advice on complex areas of criminal law, including what constitutes obstruction of justice and that has been an issue of debate for a while now. Most recently, when former FBI Director James Comey testified Thursday.Dreeben is the department s go-to lawyer on criminal justice cases and is highly respected by Democrats and Republicans alike due to his encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law, according to the Washington Post.Dreeben has been pulled into the investigation to work part time for Mueller while he continues to oversee the department s criminal appellate cases, according to Justice officials.According to former and current Justice Department officials, Mueller s recruitment of Dreeben into the probe shows how serious he is about the investigation and signals complexities in the investigation.Dreeben is thought of as brilliant in his area of expertise:Michael is the most brilliant and most knowledgeable federal criminal lawyer in America period, said Walter Dellinger, a law professor at Duke University School of Law and acting solicitor general for the 1996-1997 term of the Supreme Court. I learned early on in my time as acting [solicitor general] that there was no point of ever thinking of second-guessing Michael on a matter of federal criminal law because he just knew more than I did or could ever know, Dellinger said. He s a straight shooter, and is held in the greatest esteem by the FBI and lawyers in U.S. attorneys offices all over the country. It s not just Dreeben:Mueller s team includes Jeannie Rhee, a former deputy assistant attorney general and a partner in the investigations practice at WilmerHale, and Andrew Weissmann, the chief of the Justice Department s fraud section who oversaw corruption investigations including the probe into cheating by Volkswagen on diesel emissions tests over.Aaaand, Trump s lawyer can t even spell President so that s kind of sad, don t you think? Marc Kasowitz, Trump s life-long personal attorney, issued a statement to refute Comey s testimony. The only problem is that it was riddled with errors, including the spelling of President. Spelling is HARD.Trump better lawyer up but hire someone more effective because it s Mueller Time!


In a landmark move, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Tuesday that it is changing its posture toward gays. The church has decided to support anti-discrimination legislation for gays and lesbians in the realm of housing and employment. The church also announced that it it comes with the condition that no one can be forced to perform actions if he or she has religious objections. One example, a doctor who refuses to artificially inseminate a lesbian couple. Utah is facing two bills that protections for each group. Political watchers in the state have noted that both measures would be likely to pass if the LDS Church got behind it. "When religious people are publicly intimidated, retaliated against, forced from employment or made to suffer personal loss because they have raised their voice in the public square, donated to a cause, or participated in an election, our democracy is the loser," said Elder Dallin Oaks, a member of the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles. "Such tactics are every bit as wrong as denying access to employment, housing, or public services because of race or gender." However, this month, the church was in hot water for planning to excommunicate a prominent critic of its same-sex marriage stance for the apostasy.


NTEB Ads Privacy Policy Iran Sending Elite IRGC Warfighters Into Europe And United States In Preparation For Battle Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash. by Geoffrey Grider November 2, 2016 The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country's elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.  EDITOR'S NOTE: This is just a small bit of what our next president will have to deal with. Do you want a president who needs to take naps all the time , or do you want a Commander in Chief who is awake, alert and highly energized to get the job done? It's a no-brainer, people, go out and vote to #MakeAmericaSafeAgain.  The IRGC "will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon," according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran's hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.  "The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon," Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran's Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC. Iran's secret army, the IRGC:  The military leader's comments come as Iran is spending great amounts of money to upgrade its military hardware and bolster its presence throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran intends to spend billions to purchase U.S.-made planes that are likely to be converted for use in its air force.  Congressional leaders and others suspect that Iran has used a large portion of the cash windfall it received as a result of last summer's nuclear agreement to upgrade its fighting capabilities war machine.  "The IRGC is [the] strong guardian of the Islamic Republic," Abnoush was quoted as saying. "The Fedayeen of Velayat [fighting force] are under the order of Iran's Supreme leader. Defending and protecting the Velayat [the Supreme Leader] has no border and limit." Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash.  Iran accuses the U.S. of violating its end of the agreement by not helping the Islamic Republic gain further access to international banks and other markets. Iran's frustration over this has led to further accusations about a U.S. plot to foster unrest in the country. Iran IRGC UAV & UCAV operation units in Persian Gulf:  "Our enemies have several projects to destroy our Islamic revolution, and have waged three wars against us to execute their plans against our Islamic Republic," Abnoush said. "The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us."  "And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts. Some believe the holy defense ended," the military leader added. "They are wrong; the holy defense continues, and today, it is more complicated than before."  Congressional sources and experts involved in tracking Iran's increased aggression in the region and elsewhere told the Washington Free Beacon that these most recent comments are troubling given Iran's very public efforts to assassinate political enemies and others across the globe.  "If we look at Iran's previous terror attacks and assassination campaign around the world, such a statement is alarming," Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon . "The Islamic Republic has killed hundreds of Iranians and non-Iranians around the world in a coordinated campaign of terror. Iran may decide to restart the project now that many western companies are going to Iran and Iran feels its action in Europe may not be punished strongly."  Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces.  "Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they're the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism," the source said. "Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they're sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home." source SHARE THIS ARTICLE Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING


Trump's grandfather was a pimp and tax evader; his father a member of the KKK ‹ › Bio by Jack Heart : My earliest memories were of being surrounded by machinery and a constant deep mechanical humming rose and fell like the breath of fitful sleep. Maybe it was the "mother ship" or the "Montauk underground" like Preston Nichols author of the The Montauk Projects would later claim but I am inclined to believe it was the post natal care room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn where I was born to a well to do family. I grew up in Brooklyn. My father had a Fur business on Twenty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. The city bought him and his partners out when they built the Fashion Institute of Technology. From grades one to five I attended the finest Catholic school in NYC. Before I was 12 my family moved to Amity Harbor Long Island and from there the volume on the strangeness was turned up full blast. My teenage years were spent working on fishing boats at Montauk Point where my father had been stationed at Camp Hero for the Korean War. Back home in Amityville we would wile away the night doing performance art for tourists milling around outside my best friend's home gawking at the Amityville Horror House, some of you may have already met me I was one of the guys throwing beer bottles at you. Butchy to this day doesn't know who was up in that room with him that night, nobody does but I can take a real good guess. By the time I was eighteen I realized that globalism had made the seas off Long Island barren and I would have to find a new way in life to make a living. I had always wanted to be a fisherman but I opened a landscaping business with my mother who was the top woman designer in her field. Our clients included many celebrities and denizens of Long islands gold coast. Back then it seemed life would always be good. I remember one day while dragging trees out some stock broker's yard he pulled up his long driveway in his convertible sports car. I looked at his decaying body not much older than mine. Then I looked down at mine. Salty sweat encased sinewy bronze muscles pumped full of blood from the days exertion. I decided I was just where I wanted to be. He would make his 500$ for the day and he had to give it to me because there was no way he was dragging that tree down his long driveway. Little did I know that he and his tribal brethren had a plan. Over the next twenty years they would flood America with illegal "immigrants" to do my job for a hundred dollars a day. Things are not so good anymore even with an associate's degree in architectural engineering I'll never make 500$ a day again. He makes more because now the government that sold me out, not once but three times subsidizes his job. I wonder how many of his tribe are buried in veterans memorial cemetery's. Practically every male member of my family is. I ended up on the wrong side of the law when I was 27 years old through no fault of my own. I was helping Geraldo Rivera film what I now realize must have been Ollie North's little cocaine contra excursion into NY. It was never aired. He quit his job but I was beaten and tortured by the police then branded as a felon for the rest of my life. In 1987 I was asked to remove the Pagans motorcycle gang from their clubhouse a strip club named Bogart's. The person that asked me was Richard Capri who died abruptly a few years back. He owned Bogart's and a lot of other strip clubs on Long Island. He was a prominent figure in New York's underworld. Financially he dwarfed people like Gotti and the rest of the menagerie of mutts paraded on TV as "mob bosses." It was during that period that I realized I was a member of a very elite unit. Some would call us soldiers of God others the army of Satan. You read what I write and you decide. LUCIFER in the Temple of the Dog I By Jack Heart on October 28, 2016 LUCIFER in the Temple of the Dog I By Jack Heart, Orage & Friends  Every story has a beginning and an end, everything in between is just a story…  The oldest stories known come from the Aborigine people of Australia. Their stories go back at least thirty thousand years. They are passed on orally by the tribe's elders under a rigid tradition called "the law" which ensures the preservation of the Aborigines ancient tribal narratives. Linguistic scholars who have studied them have noted the Aborigines ability to sustain "the inter-generational scaffolding needed to transmit stories over vast periods." 1  Aborigine tribal lore has been academically documented to chronicle the thawing of the Ice Age and the flooding of the Australian coastline thirteen-thousand years ago.2 According The Wisdom Keepers an episode of Ancient Aliens, the television show purporting to document alien intervention in human history, Aborigine lore also recounts meteorite impacts, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and solar eclipses…3  What is certain is that aborigine culture ignores the brutal realities of its own existence and focuses on what is now called the dreamtime. The word dreamtime itself is a mistranslation of the Aborigine word alcheringa, which means the uncreated source; a source which was always there, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything that is perceived is derived.  To the aborigine the dreamtime is an altered state of consciousness that lies across the uncharted chasms of the mind, a place where everything that ever was has been imprinted forever in the aether. Nothing that was, nothing that is, can be lost and it can always be accessed by going back to the beginning through ceremonies and dreams.  According to Ancient Aliens; "in many ways the concept of dreamtime mirrors the ancient Hindu idea of the Akashic records." 4 This may not be true…  The idea of Akashic records go back no further than Madam Blavatsky and Theosophy, a system of mysticism which she founded. Akasha simply means aether in Sanskrit.  The expansion of the microcosm into the macrocosm and contraction back of the macrocosm into the microcosm is a doctrine of just about every reputable school of mysticism. "As it is above is so it is below" to the Hermitic. "And the living creatures rush forth and return" as it is written in verse 537 of the Zohar: Concerning the Eyes of Microprosopus…  If Blavatsky and her followers got the idea from anywhere other than a library that there was an astral hall of cosmic records it was from Tibetan lamas schooled in the all but forgotten ways of the ancient Bon religion. Bon was the mysterious religion of Tibet before Buddhism, a primal type of animism that believes all things animate and inanimate are sourced from an invisible world.  Ancient Aliens is a show that is often painful to watch yet is a necessity for any serious student of human history. The show has by far its finest moment in its decade long existence when it proposes that the Aborigines concept of the dreamtime matches a leading edge property of String Theory called the "Holographic paradigm."5  There are tears in the fabric of Mans reality that upon scrutiny open to abysses of darkness. Quantum entanglement as been proven over and over again in laboratories whose annual budget would bankrupt a small country. Einstein was wrong and his precious "particles" do react with each other by some mechanism that travels faster than light. Anyone who's ever had a premonition should have known that…  In the Holographic universe, quantum entanglement the enigma of superluminal interaction between particles –what a baffled Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," petulantly denying its existence in the face of all the evidence (even then) 6 – is easily explained. What are being observed in particle physics are not particles at all, but different aspects of interference patterns generated by the collision of spherical frequency waves emanating from an Event Horizon.  The Holographic paradigm postulates, in fact takes it as a given, that at the threshold of the time-space continuum, what physicists call the cosmological horizon, lay the source of everything that is, ever was, or will be. The information that composes the universe is never lost or changed. It's immutable and is broadcast in oscillating signals, generating a chaotic sea of fluctuating frequencies that are picked up by mans senses and translated by the mind into the three dimensional world in which he finds himself.  In short; consciousness takes place inside a frequency receiver and "reality" is a television show…  The empirical evidence is overwhelming that the human brain works in the exact same manner as a hologram. This is called the Holonomic brain theory by neuroscientists. Many just cannot accept its implications. But its founder Karl Pribram, who held professorships for ten years at Yale and thirty at Stanford, was the Albert Einstein of neuroscience…  Pribram died in the beginning of 2015 at the age of ninety-five after a long and distinguished career working side by side with such giants in science as BF Skinner, Jon von Neumann and David Bohm; arguably the most brilliant physicist that the Anglo-American empire produced during the twentieth century.  Bohm collaborated closely with Pribram in the formulation of the Holonomic brain theory, but his earlier radical communist political affiliations would have barred him from the inner sanctums of the Stanford Research Institute.  There at Menlo Park, in the womb of madness, Pribram would have had access to at least some of the classified material of Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Throughout the seventies Puthoff and Targ were weaponizing the paranormal for Americas Department of Defense. They were working in the outer limits of quantum entanglement. In fact, Pribram admits to consulting with both Puthoff and Targ about it before beginning his collaboration with Bohm…7  In the same interview, from years ago, Pribram explains that "when an input comes in through one of the senses to the brain, it has to then become encoded in some way so that there is a representation."8 Pribram calls these representations memory traces and says they have no localized point of origin in the brain.  "If you hack away at the brain" in surgery "you would expect that whatever representational process there is and –call it a memory trace if you will– that it would really be impaired tremendously, that you would remove a memory," like cutting off a piece of a picture. "It doesn't work that way."  Pribram –a highly skilled neurosurgeon– noted among other things for his experimental work at the Yerkes Primate Center, of which he became director, recounts that "when lesions occur in the brain there is never any particular memory trace that is removed." Recalling from over a half century of experience he continues "you may remove something, like the way to retrieve, to get back out the memory. For instance; you might not be able to talk about it but you can still write a note and say what it is you mean."9  But the overall method by which these memories are spread throughout the brain, enabling them to avoid damage from injury, has always been a mystery.  Pribram explains that it was discovered in the late fifties that the input from the retina is organized in spots, then focused into lines in the cerebral cortex suggesting that the cerebral cortex is filled with cells that act as line detectors. These cells are sensitive to lines at multiple orientations and once you have lines you can create "circles, faces, stick figures, whatever" to formulate images.10  The idea that the cerebral cortex was interpreting interference patterns can be traced back to Germany in 1906.11 Decades later, John Lashley, Pribram's mentor at the Yerkes Primate Center, reached the same conclusion.  Interference patterns can be seen in the water if you cast two stones in a pool. When the series of concentric waves generated by each of the stones clash the resulting confused ripples or wavelets are interference patterns.  In the interview Pribram asks "what might constitute those interference patterns in the brain" and "given interference patterns, how do you get an image out of that?"12 He then answers his own questions saying both problems were solved when people started building holograms at the University of Michigan and at Stanford (around 1962). He qualifies that by saying "because a hologram is a photographic store of ripples, of interference patterns. Instead of pebbles on a pond, what you have is light beams hitting the film." 13The light then spreads in ripples over the surface of the film.  Pribram continues "Every light beam that hits does that and the neighboring ones do it and the neighboring ones and so you got every light beam, every part of a beam essentially spread over the entire surface. That's why mathematically it's called a spread function."14  In a hologram that spread function is translated into images and with every passing year in neuroscience it becomes more and more apparent, Pribram uses the word "overwhelmingly,"15 that the brain functions in the same manner.  Pribram goes on to say that "over the last thirty years or so more and more evidence has accumulated to suggest strongly that the cerebral cortex acts as a resonator. It resonates to the frequencies of energies that are being transduced by the receptors; it's the frequencies of energies." He emphasizes that this is not an epiphany. German scientists were talking about it in 1906…16  Holography works by using interference patterns to encode information about a three dimensional object into what is, for all intents and purposes, a two dimensional light beam. The interference patterns can then be translated back into a three dimensional object. A tremendous amount of information can be stored and transferred this way.  Another profoundly functional feature of the hologram and analogous to the non-locality of memory in the human brain, is that all information is stored throughout the entire hologram. As long as a part of the hologram is big enough to contain the interference pattern, it can recreate the entire image stored in the hologram.  Holographic technology is based on the Fourier transform, a type of integral transfer sometimes called an improper Riemann integral. The Fourier transform itself is a mathematical function originally used in the nineteenth century to show the transfer of heat between two systems. Fourier transforms are the foundation of Spectral Analysis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.  In a Fourier transform two graphs are created; one showing the frequency domain and the other the time domain. The differential is then mapped between the two domains and through various permutations of the equations a spread sheet is achieved of all the individual frequencies that constitute a function of time, what is defined as a signal…  Often it is easier to solve a problem in the time domain by working on it in the frequency domain. Afterwards transformation of the result can be made back to the time domain by reversing the equation, what is called an inverse Fourier transform. The entire signal can be filtered simply by changing the frequencies in the frequency domain…  A Fourier transform can, theoretically, be used to send a function of the three dimensional continuum into a moving four dimensional mass or vice a versa…  The father of the Holograph is 1971 Nobel Prize recipient Dennis Gabor, who right after WW II produced the math –called windowed Fourier transforms– necessary to make one. Gabor served in a Hungarian artillery unit during WW I and in the twenties was instrumental in the development of the electron microscope in Berlin. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933 Gabor, a Hungarian Jew that had converted to Lutherism, fled Germany to England.  By the time Gabor worked with them, Fourier transforms had been infused with the genius of Bernhard Riemann, the nineteenth century German mathematician who broke the back of Euclidian geometry for good, making quantum physics and relativity possible. Erwin Schrödinger, the twentieth century Austrian physicist whose wave equation would become one of the two pillars of quantum physics and the foundation of wave mechanics.  David Hilbert, the German mathematician who taught most of the others and after whom Hilbert's Space is named, and Werner Heisenberg the discoverer of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the other pillar of quantum physics…  Gabor would have at least had access if not worked directly with the legendary Jon von Neumann, Hilbert's best pupil. Gabor and von Neumann were both Jews, native Hungarians and born to money, although von Neumann's education under Hilbert had been paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. Von Neumann was in fact titled nobility, besides being the man who named Hilbert's Space in Hilbert's honor.  Von Neumann was perhaps the most brilliant mathematician who ever lived. He would leave Berlin upon concluding his tutelage under Hilbert and be in Princeton by the end of 1929…  At Princeton, von Neumann delighted in playing Prussian marching music so loud on his gramophone that Einstein, who was in an adjoining office, would have to ask the authorities to intervene. In vain, there was nothing Einstein or anyone else could do about it. Von Neumann wrote the textbook for Quantum mechanics; Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, or in English Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.  His mathematical contributions to civilization could fill a library, but his real achievements remain classified till this day. It is said that when von Neumann was dying of cancer, while under sedation he was surrounded by a Special Forces guard to insure he didn't blurt out any of the empires secrets.  Von Neumann would tell anyone who would listen, delighted in it, that he had mathematically proven Einstein wrong. Most academics, although they could not understand his math, believed him and still do… Although they are now fonder of the experimental results of John Stewart Bell for their Einstein bashing…17  Einstein had always insisted that there were hidden variables that when discovered would reconcile quantum physics, which is indeterminate, and relativity, which is determinate. In Einstein's vision of the future there would be just one unified field of physical phenomena and that would be determinant.  In physics, determinant means events transpire as a result of a mechanistic necessity and are therefore predictable. They follow laws. All physical phenomena should follow rules.  But they don't. In Quantum physics, quantum entanglement is not the only enigma. There is the double slit experiment where an individual particle is fired through a slit and another through a different slit at a screen. What shows up on the screen is a wave interference pattern which could have only been made by waves passing through the slit…  There is the wave function collapse and quantum randomness in general. If the observer calculates the position of a "sub-atomic particle" in space they cannot calculate its momentum because the very act of locating it influences its trajectory. If they find its momentum, the act of their doing so prevents them from finding its position. That's the short definition of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  It's all about predicting probabilities in a matrix, nothing is certain and the observer is part of the equation, anathema to 'good science…'  Erwin Schrödinger, who won the Nobel Prize in 1933 for providing the equation that makes it all work, was more than just a scientist. A philosopher and poet at heart, he was a lifelong student of the Vedas and believed individual consciousness was a manifestation of the universal whole.  Back then, Schrödinger described the prevailing interpretation of quantum physics, now called the Copenhagen interpretation, as making no distinction "between the state of a natural object and what I know about it, or perhaps better, what I can know about it if I go to some trouble. Actually — so they say — there is intrinsically only awareness, observation, measurement."18  The Copenhagen interpretation is the prevailing school of thought in quantum physics to this very day. As George Berkeley, the father of Immaterialism and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation, said three hundred years ago; nothing can exist if there is nothing to see it, "esse est percipi," to be is to be perceived.  After serving as an apprentice to the mysterious German scientist; Max Wien, heir of Friedrich Paschen's late nineteenth century experimental research on hydrogen spectral lines in the infrared region, Schrödinger would begin publishing papers about atomic theory and the theory of spectra in the early twenties…  He would publish his famous equation in 1926. In the twenty-first century, it's still the tool mathematicians use to describe a wave function. In the Copenhagen interpretation the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system.  In Quantum mechanics the Schrödinger equation predicts probability distributions from which results are drawn. A probability distribution is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon. There are no exact results and at the time Schrödinger is quoted as saying "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."19  Einstein was livid. Not only was special relativity no longer feasible but perhaps relativity itself. As every school child knows he said "God does not play dice with the universe!"  Schrödinger worked closely with Einstein in the ensuing years, attempting to formulate a unified field theory and reconcile the whole mess into one determinant science, but by the end of the forties he had abandoned those efforts. In a 1952 lecture, he made the first documentable reference to what has become known as the multiverse, prefacing it by saying that what he was about to say might "seem lunatic." 20  Schrödinger went on to tell his perplexed audience that when his equations seem to be describing several different histories they are "not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously…"21  Famously, in 1956 Schrödinger would refuse to speak about nuclear energy at an important lecture during the World Energy Conference, giving a philosophical lecture instead because he had become skeptical about the entire subject. He would cause a great deal of controversy in the physics community after that, abandoning the idea of particles altogether and adopting the wave-only theory also put forth by Hugh Everett III in his many-worlds interpretation of the multiverse.  In the many-worlds interpretation, the wave in the quantum state is the only thing that is real and under the appropriate conditions it will exhibit particle-like behavior. In Everett's multiverse, everything that ever could have happened in the past did and every possibility spawns its own universe where that possibility did and does occur.  After Jon von Neumann died prematurely of cancer in 1957 Hugh Everett III would become the Anglo-American empires go-to guy on Quantum physics…  Pilot Waves were first proposed by Einstein in an effort to explain the wave interference patterns produced by particles in cases like the double slit experiment. He had hoped that they could be explained deterministically if the particle were somehow guided by an electromagnetic field; "which would thus play the role of what he called a Führungsfeld or guiding field."22  The idea of a pilot wave was picked up and made mathematically feasible by Louis de Broglie in 1927, but with little support from a physics community now enamored by Heisenberg and the Copenhagen interpretation it died a slow death from neglect.  De Broglie's math was resurrected by David Bohm in 1952 and renamed Bohmian mechanics. Heisenberg, who had been "profoundly unsympathetic"23 to the idea from its inception in the twenties wrote in 1955 that it was nothing more than an "exact repetition" of the Copenhagen interpretation "in a different language…"24  Regardless of the value of "Bohmian mechanics" the rest of what David Bohm had to say about the holographic universe may be a summation of everything that was really learned by man in the twentieth century (outside of course all those in this account who had an above top secret clearance…).  Bohm said there were two worlds. The primary one he called the Implicate Order or the enfolded order. He said the enfolded order was "the ground out of which reality emerges."25The other world, "reality," the world of the human senses, the world where consciousness dwells, he called the Explicate Order or the unfolded order.  "What we take for reality, Bohm argues, are surface phenomena, explicate forms that have temporarily unfolded out of an underlying implicate order. Within this deeper order forms are enfolded within each other so systems which may well be separated in the Explicate Order are contained within each other in the Implicate Order."26  Superficially it would appear the two worlds are "dual forms related by an integral transfer" but the reality is the unfolded order cannot exist independent of the enfolded order.27  Bohm, always a pariah to the powers that be because of his politics sometimes had his work classified before he could even finish it. In the Manhattan project he was barred access to Los Alamos and was not allowed to write the thesis for his own scattering equations.  Einstein had always been his mentor, shielding him and preventing his ostracism from academia and Bohm had always worked closely with him in Einstein's quest to save physics as he knew it. But by the end of the war Bohm had come to the conclusion that quantum mechanics would never become a deterministic science. He stopped looking for deterministic mechanisms as the cause of quantum phenomena and set out to show that the events could be attributed to a far deeper underlying reality.  Bohm's idea of an Implicate and Explicate order mirror the conclusions reached by Mircea Eliade, the world's foremost theological scholar of the WW II era… Eliade said there are only the Sacred and the Profane. The Sacred is the place of mythology, where the gods and archetypes dwell together with all the things that establish the very structure of this world. The Sacred is the First Cause of the Gnostics, the alcheringa of the Aborigine and the Implicate Order of Bohmian mechanics.  The Profane is the material things of this world, the things that have nothing to do with the Sacred. They are basically just like the set in an old black and white movie story… Eliade said they "acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality."28 In other words, it is only through its participation in the Sacred that the Profane finds validation.  Through his myths, his ceremonies and his rituals, even in his behavior and dreams, man manifests the Sacred into the Profane. It is Man himself that breaths reality into the fleeting and phantasmagorical world of the Profane…  Eliade said that in order to uphold the world of the Profane, the Scared must be manifested into it, over and over again. He called these incarnations, these places where the Sacred intersects with the Profane, the Eternal Return (not to be confused with Nietzsche's Eternal Return, just as important but more to do with the cycle of the Yuga's and the Mandela). Eliade called these manifestations of the Sacred into the Profane hierophanies.  Eliade maintained that all Shamanic practices in cultures uncluttered by the poisons of twentieth century rationalism, indeed the foundation of all Paleolithic spiritual practices, was an attempt to produce these hierophanies.  No one was, nor ever will be, more influential than Mircea Eliade, not even the vaunted Joseph Campbell. But present day academia with its penchant for semantics and cutting the whole up into smaller and smaller pieces till there is nothing left to see at all (both Pribram29 and Bohm30 warned the world about this), still rails against him. They say Eliade painted all cultures with too broad a brush stroke and seem to feel that their exceptions are more important than his whole, the same mistake Einstein made… But even Eliade's staunchest critic; Geoffrey Kirk, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1984 and prolific author himself, concedes that what Eliade said about the Eternal Return fit the culture of Australia's aborigines like Cinderella's slipper…  There has always been something dark and foreboding about Australia. Master of horror H P Lovecraft wrote about it in The Shadow out of Time. There is something menacing, something unspoken and threatening, a nameless fear of the stark and unforgiving land and an instinctual loathing of its native aborigine inhabitants that runs like an unseen current through the hard White men who dispossessed them.  In 1770 a British exploratory expedition led by James Cook would land in Botany Bay where the great city of Sidney now stands. They began shooting the natives immediately and the fighting would continue for over a hundred and fifty years. It finally subsided after the Coniston massacre in 1928 in the Northern Territory, which left over a hundred Aborigine dead.  Overall the fighting left thousands of Whites dead and hundreds of thousands of Aborigines. There were no pitched battles; the fighting was at close quarters, often hand to hand before repeating rifles were invented and savagely brutal, more like gang fights than military engagements. Atrocities were committed by both sides and in the interest of political correctness a well documented history of cannibalism among the Aborigine has been kept suppressed by the authorities.31  The Aborigine bore no animosity towards Whites because of their skin color. Eating the dead was strictly business in a land where distances are endless and the sun relentless. As settlers claimed the rights to all Australia's fertile land the Stone Age hunting and gathering lifestyle of the Aborigine provided less and less sustenance. Resentment, and hunger, became inevitable.  But a journal from as late as 1849 explains how the Aborigine viewed Whites as their "ancestors who have returned to them again."32 The archived diary describes how the Aborigine, before eating each other, would "scorch off the entire outer skin or epidermis which reveals the 'true skin' which in all branches of the human race is quite white."33  "Their impression being that when they die 'The black fellow England walk and by and by jump up white fellow.'"34 Australia is rivaled for geological anomalies only by its nearest neighbor Papua New Guinea. Both have stood in isolation for what academia says is sixty thousand years. Only their indigenous tribes, more like ghosts than men, can testify as to what cataclysmic events they may have witnessed.  In the Kimberley region of Western Australia four thousand year old cave paintings depict fantastic beings from the dreamtime called Wandgina. Local Aborigine believe the actions of the Wandgina in the dreamtime manifest themselves as features in the landscape of Australia's Great Western Desert. They believe these beings control the wind, the rain and the lighting… The Wandgina  Rising like a specter out of the center of the Australian continent and on an otherwise almost unbroken horizon is Uluru or Ayers Rock, an isolated hill that appears like a single great stone has been imbedded into the earth. Uluru, a Mecca for tourists, is famous for its glowing red appearance at dusk and dawn and is sacred to the Aborigine.  At two miles long, over a mile wide and eleven hundred feet high Uluru is by far Australia's best known geological anomaly. But just as striking is Kata Tjuta, fifteen and a half miles to the west and Mount Conner, slightly to the south and forty-five miles east of Uluru.  Kata Tjuta or the Olga's consists of thirty six domes covering a little less than eight and half square miles, the tallest being Mount Olga at over seventeen hundred feet high. Mount Conner covers eight and half square miles and rises nine hundred and eighty-four feet at its highest point. All of them are conglomerates of granite-like stone and gravel cemented by a matrix of sandstone, about 50% feldspar, 25–35% quartz and up to 25% rock fragments.  Explanations abound for how the island mountains, called inselbergs by academics, got to be in the western desert. They range from the electric universe theory which postulates that they are the result of an immense electrical discharge, to creationism which of course believes they were scoured out by the deluge, all the way to academia's old standby of a greased pig, erosion…  Local Aborigines believe most of the south face of Uluru is the result of a war fought in the dreamtime between the carpet-snakes (Kunyia) and the venomous-snakes (Liru). The northwestern corner of Uluru and most of its north face were formed as a result of the activities of the hare-wallaby's (Mala) and the comings and goings of other dreamtime entity's fill in the rest of Uluru's geological features.  To the Aborigine it is the dreamtime that generates this world and with it the landscape…  Black Mountain National Park is located at the northern end of Queensland, a little over five miles from the Coral Sea. "The park" is just a restricted three square mile area around a pile of dark colored granite boulders, some the size of houses. The pile reaches almost a thousand feet in height. Academics have explanations for this striking geological anomaly but to the untrained and perhaps the more objective eye the boulders appear to have been placed there by unknown methods for unknown reasons.  Black Mountain has a sinister reputation among Whites as well as the Aborigine. The Aborigine call it Kalkajaka or place of the spear and avoid it. People disappear around Kalkajaka and the people who go looking for them disappear too.  Some believe the missing have simply been lost forever in the labyrinthine passages between the boulders. Others claim the missing were eaten or enslaved by reptilian aliens that, among other things, have been sighted around the rocks. They believe reptilian aliens have a secret base under Black Mountain where UFO sightings are a regular occurrence.  UFO's have been receiving a lot of attention lately in Australia. An Australian himself, Duncan Roads –editor of Nexus Magazine for over a quarter century and the most respected name in the alternative media– recounts "Australia is certainly a hot spot of UFO sightings. We've had a phenomenal growth in the reporting of UFO sightings by the general public especially since the advent of the internet."35  Roads points to the area around the Blue Mountains in Australia's New South Wales "as a hotspot of UFO sightings and other mysteries. There is certainly a lot of mystery in the Blue Mountains. Campers, bushwalkers, explorers all have got tails of mystery, disappearing people, strange tunnels, strange noises and strange creature sightings…"36  According to Aboriginal tribal elder Kevin Gavi Duncan "the Blue Mountains is a very sacred area, sacred place, especially the highest places, because we would be closer to Baiame, closer to god."37  The human disappearances in the Blue Mountains seem to be focused around Mount Yengo. Called the Uluru of the east, the flat top of Mt. Yengo rises about a thousand feet above a plateau and is believed by academics to be all that remains of an ancient volcano. Perhaps because of its prominent flat top, Aborigine tribes believe that after he was done with the act of creating this world their creator god Baiame leapt back up into the spirit world from Mt. Yengo.  Roads continues "UFO sightings of the Blue Mountains have triggered many magazine articles, radio shows and books. A lot of people have come forward over the last few decades to document and put onto the record their own experiences."38 Rex Gilroy, author of Mysterious Australia, has unearthed accounts of UFO sightings in the Blue Mountains by nineteenth century pioneers…39  Ancient Aliens straight man David Hatcher Childress theorizes that the Blue Mountains are a "stargate, some portal to another dimension and jumping to hyperspace perhaps…"40 Childress speculates "For some reason Australia was the place where they put this hyperspace portal used by extra terrestrials."41  Duncan continues "there are stories that elders would say, that some people have actually travelled back to the Morning Star and have come back again."42 Earlier, standing in front of an ancient rock carving depicting Baiame about forty miles southeast of Mt. Yengo, Duncan explained "Baiame came from a place that we call the Morning Star within the Mirrabooka. Mira means stars and booka means river. That is the Milky Way that flows across the North Star. "43 Baiame, Bulgandry Aboriginal Engraving site, Brisbane Water National Park, New South Wales, Australia  Duncan then gives his interpretation of the petroglyph. Baiame "holds the Moon in one hand and the Morning Star in the other. Which is a bit like what we call planet earth and these are the two moons which exist around the Morning Star in the Mirrabooka."44  What the petroglyph shows is Baiame with his arms outstretched and a giant knife horizontal across his naval. The hilt is under his left arm. He is holding a circle in his right hand and a crescent in his left. Below the crescent is another circle suspended in mid air and slightly smaller than the one he holds in his right hand. To the right of the free floating circle, perfectly horizontal to it, is a much smaller almost tiny circle. Slightly to the right of the tiny circle and above it is another tiny circle.45  If the two tiny circles are rotated about two hundred and eighty degrees clockwise or ninety degrees counter clockwise so that the tiny circle that was furthest from Baiame is now in the hilt of the knife you would have close to an image of what, left to right, is in the middle of Australia. Mount Conner would be the large circle, now furthest right.  The Three Sisters rock formation is about fifty miles to the Southwest of Mt. Yengo. The three craggy pillars of sandstone tower above the lush Jamison Valley. No doubt conjuring memories in Australia's early Anglo-Saxon settlers of the three Wyrd Sisters crouched at their cauldron casting spells on both gods and men in Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Wyrd is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning destiny, to come to pass, to become. By the fifteenth century it had come to mean having the power to control fate. In sixteenth century Scotland and northern England wyrd implied that an event was miraculous. It wasn't till the early nineteenth century that weird came to mean something was odd. The Proto-Indo-European root is wert meaning to turn or to rotate…  In the 1965 epic science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert the Wyrding Way is an overwhelming close quarter fighting technique used by the story's messianic hero and his rebel armies with devastating effectiveness. In hand to hand combat its adepts are able to maneuver around and strike their opponents at speeds that resemble teleportation to the observer and words and sounds can be amplified to become lethal weapons.  Mastery of the Wyrding Way required the adoption of a completely different concept of what the space-time continuum is and what its cause and effect are. The essence of the Wyrding Way is summed up in both the motto and the mantra of its practitioners "my mind affects my reality."  Wyrd is a notion taken from the pre-Christian religion of the Norseman. In Old Norse the word is Urðr. It is also the name of the mother of the Norns, female beings who rule over the destiny of gods and men. There are many Norns, good and evil, who appear at a person's side at their birth and decide upon their future.  Urðr (fate), Verðandi (present) and Skuld (karmic debt) are the most powerful of the Norns and said to have come to intervene in a time long past when the gods ruled too haughtily over men. The three beautiful maidens pour the purifying waters of the Urðarbrunnr (Well of Urðr) over the Yggdrasil (Tree of Life) to keep it eternally rejuvenated.  The Urðarbrunnr is said to be one of three wells, one under each of the three roots of the Yggdrasil. Each root reaches to a different far off land. The other two wells are Hvergelmir (bubbling boiling spring), located beneath a root in Niflheim (Abode of Mist), and Mímisbrunnr (Mímir's well), located beneath a root near the home of the frost jötnar (Giant). It was said that Odin gave one of his eyes to drink from the Mímisbrunnr, the well of wisdom and understanding.  Aside from Tasmania and parts of New Zealand Australia's Blue Mountains is the last real stop in the Pacific Ocean before the Antarctic. The Blue Mts. are about as far away as you can get from the land of the Norsemen on the Baltic Sea. But as Caroline Cory author of The Visible and Invisible Worlds of God notes "there are several umbilical cords on the planet. This particular location is located exactly at negative thirty-three latitude."46  Cory then recites the standard alien enthusiast dogma about the thirty-three degree latitude of planet earth aligning with the center of the galaxy and how it is "continuously being visited from different parts of the planetary system from different parts of the galaxy and even from beyond this galaxy, from way out in the universe."47  Most amateur UFO enthusiasts have never heard of Bruce Cathie and his book; Harmonic 33, published way back in 1968. But most professional researchers are well acquainted with the book and many new age authors use Cathie's math to validate their Tinkerbellian speculations.  "Even while you read this interplanetary space ships are rebuilding a world grid system from which it appears they can draw motive power and they are possibly using the grid for navigational purposes." 48  This is the cover sentence in Harmonic 33. There are rumors that the original book was immediately pulled from bookstore shelves, edited, then rereleased with Cathie put under wraps and assigned a handler, never to produce anything again of any consequence for the general public, though he would write a few more books.  Cathie, a New Zealand airline pilot, saw his first UFO in 1952. He would be fascinated till he died in 2013. He began collecting data and collating it with sightings by other pilots over New Zealand. Using techniques borrowed from French UFO researcher Aimé Michel he was able to establish two track lines where aerial anomalies were being regularly encountered. From there he "was able to form a complete grid network over the whole of the New Zealand…"49  Cathie learned that the American survey ship Eltanin had taken some of the strangest photographs of the twentieth century off the west coast of South America. There, thirteen thousand feet beneath the waves mounted on the pacific sea bed was an "aerial-like object" that was "two-to-three-feet high and had six main crossbars spaced evenly up its stem with a smaller one at the top. Each set of crossbars had a small ball at the end of each arm."50  Later one of the scientists who had been on board the Eltanin told Cathie the object was thought to be metallic and an artifact of some kind. Cathie was able to align his New Zealand grid with the coordinates of the artifact fashioning what he reasoned was a world energy grid and perhaps used as a galactic navigational tool by extra-terrestrials.  Interestingly enough, in light of Erwin Schrödinger's actions at the World Energy Conference in 1956, Cathie did not believe nuclear weapons could be detonated randomly but would have to be at exactly the right coordinates at exactly the right time to work. Using his world energy grid he started publically predicting the exact times and places of test sites before they got him muzzled…  In Cathie's own words "It was only a matter of time before I realized that the energy network formed by the grid was already known to a powerful group of international interests and scientists. It became obvious that the system had many military applications, and that political advantage could be gained by those with secret knowledge of this nature. It would be possible for a comparatively small group, with this knowledge, to take over control of the world." 51  Cathie concluded that the "whole of physical reality was in fact manifested by a complex pattern of interlocking wave-forms."52  Aliens are a very grey area, as is reality itself. What the Explicate Order translates out of the Implicate Order, what the Sacred manifests in the Profane, they are like points in a wave that show up as a particle. Just as surely they are guided only by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle…  Something is going on in the Blue Mountains, always has been. It's been categorized by twenty-first century academia as paranormal but it's something Australia's aboriginal people are well acquainted with.  Duncan Roads is the man who introduced Bruce Cathie to the general public. He knows words like von Neumann knew numbers. He says "the Australian aborigines have a connection and a relationship with what we call extra terrestrials and UFO's which goes back tens of thousands of years. Their rather nonplussed by their existence, they have developed an awareness of individual types of visitors from what we call outer space."53  The Three Sisters crouch at the south edge of the town of Katoomba, an Anglo-Saxon enclave of artists and artisans. They can be viewed from its golf course and are the most famous landmark in The City of Blue Mountains, a ribbon of contiguous towns, which lie on New South Wales Main Western railway line. The City of Blue Mountains has dubbed itself 'The City within a World Heritage National Park.' It has Sister City Relationships with Sanda City, Japan and Flagstaff, Arizona in the USA.  Located in the southwest of the Four Corners, an area famed for its paranormal activities, Flagstaff is the unofficial capital of the Navaho (Diné) Nation and the Hopi, the priestly tribe who are the keepers of the Diné's most profound secrets.  Like a penitent kneeling at the foot of the alter Flagstaff prostrates itself at the south foot of Agassiz Peak, Freemont Peak and Doyle Peak in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness.  To the Hopi this area, part of the San Francisco Peaks, the remains of an eroded composite volcano, is the most sacred place in the Four Corners. In fact it is the most sacred place in the world…  The San Francisco Peaks are where the doorways open up for their gods, which they call Kachina, to come forth when they are called in the powerful ceremonies performed by the Hopi.  The Kachina are supernatural beings said to control the wind, the rain and the lighting…  At 11,464 feet Doyle Peak was the site of the world's highest astronomical observation point from 1927-1932. Built by the Lowell Observatory, the stated purpose of the cabin on the south side of the summit was to scan the heavens and make spectroscopic observations, especially in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths…  In 2005 "a collaborative project team formed, the heart of which is still active today, including NASA scientists, Navajo Medicine Men, and both NASA and Navajo educators."54 Flagstaff is the home of the Lowell Observatory, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the United States Geological Survey Flagstaff Station… Rock art from Sego Canyon at the northern frontier of the Four Corners.  Citations  1 – Reid, Nick, and Patrick D. Nunn. "Ancient Aboriginal Stories Preserve History of a Rise in Sea Level." The Conversation. 13 Jan. 2015. Web. 25 July 2016. http://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010  2 – Ibid.  3 –"Ancient Aliens S11E07 – The Wisdom Keepers." 11:00. YouTube, 7 July 2016. Web. 26 July 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mX1eWoj6I  4 –Ibid. 29:33.  5 –Ibid. 30:09.  6– MARKOFF, JOHN. "Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests 'Spooky Action' Is Real." Science. New York Times, 21 Oct. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html?_r=0  7 – "Karl Pribram 'Holographic Brain' New Dimensions 1:12:52." Youtube. Insightfreeman, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Aug. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awFleswtH2Y  8 –Ibid. 23:34.


Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday gave $50 million to Houston to help cover costs related to Hurricane Harvey, a move the mayor said will allow the city to avoid a temporary property tax hike that was up for a city council vote in October. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who accepted the money from the Republican governor at a city hall press conference, said he will pull his proposal for a one-year tax increase to cover the city's share of debris removal expenses and for insurance-related payments. Parts of Houston suffered severe wind and flood damage after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years. Earlier this week, Abbott rejected Turner's request for the state to immediately tap its $10 billion rainy day fund to aid its largest city. On Friday, the governor said he had the flexibility to withdraw $50 million from a state disaster relief fund for Houston. "This looked like the best solution at this point," Abbott told reporters. He added that once the state gets a handle on total hurricane expenses, the Texas legislature will consider tapping into the rainy day fund when its next regular session begins in January 2019 or sooner in a special session.


Jamie Oliver wearily wanks out yet another f**king cookbook 27-10-16  JAMIE Oliver has wearily dumped yet another book of recipes, photographs and shit onto the market for Christmas.  The celebrity chef, who has been stuck in this fucking rut longer than he can remember, tiredly admitted the new book is the same old bollocks with a sprig of holly on top.  He continued: "I was going to skip this year because I just cannot stand it anymore.  "But then the publisher says I've never done a Christmas one, and I say 'surely I have,' and he's like 'amazingly no' and I'm like 'well whatever' so, once again, I've crapped something out.  "It's all about boshing the old bird in the oven while you have a couple of ales and I dunno, bacon sandwiches with a bit of maple syrup on for breakfast on Boxing Day.  "Near 20 years these have been coming out now. Remember when I was the Naked Chef? A lifetime ago.  "Anyway, new fucking book, buy it or don't. You'll never make anything in it anyway."  Jamie Oliver's Christmas Cookbook is out now from Michael Joseph, priced at £26.  Share:


— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016  She's 7 years old and lives in Aleppo, Syria. As Vox reports, Aleppo has been one of the "most significant battlefield" in the country's continuous fight between Bashar al-Assad and government rebels since 2012.  Bana recently created a Twitter account with her mother, Fatemah, to finally show the world what life is like for those in their war-torn city.  In an interview with Independent Journal Review, Bana said the violence in her country is "all she knows."  When asked to describe what happens when a bomb goes off, she said:  "The bombing is predictable. It always hits civilian places so there's always fear — not just me, but thousands live in fear every day." I am very afraid I will die tonight. This bombs will kill me now. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/KqVHwqRClK — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 2, 2016  Unlike many children, Bana doesn't go to school. She explained that a typical day doesn't even involve playing outside:  "[We just] keep strong & [have] hope." This is what remains of our childhood memories. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/O7NjuxnAzP — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 21, 2016  Here she is in what used to be her family's garden, which is now just a pile of rubble: This is our bombed garden. I use to play on it, now nowhere to play. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/drWnwflSOE — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 4, 2016  As you can see, life in Aleppo is a far cry from what many in the United States will ever experience.  Bana hopes that her message for President Barack Obama will be heard loud and clear. Instead of a plea for her personal safety, her request shows tremendous understanding of the broader picture and concern for all involved:  "Stop [the] war and bring peace."  Pretty profound for a 7-year-old.  Bana has amassed a Twitter following of more than 77,000 people. When asked about having such a huge platform to share Aleppo's story, she gave the most humble and selfless response:  "[I'm] very happy and good. One day people will help us." Hello world we are still alive. Wake up this morning alive. - Fatemah #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/EZz7xqbJ6E — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 3, 2016  Bana possesses an innate ability to have faith in a situation that should give her every reason to doubt God's existence.  The 7-year-old admitted she believes in God, prays and said her faith has "increased" in light of her circumstances.  But she doesn't just pray for herself. She also said she prays every day for "peace around the world." This is me before the war. Tonight I'm praying for peace #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/vvMV6EtpVl — Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016  When Bana grows up, she wants to be three professions she "loves most": a teacher, author and actress.  She says her faith will not falter in the face of violence, war and evil. Bana firmly believes better days are coming, but has a lasting message for not just President Obama, but the entire world:  "I want us saved."