Sergei Skripal, 66, is a former Russian intelligence officer who was jailed in his homeland for spying for MI6 and allowed to relocate to the West after the most high-profile spy-swap since the Cold War that included sending the infamous Russian spy Anna Chapman back to Russia.

On Monday, he was airlifted to a hospital in South West-England where he and a younger woman were being treated in intensive care. Skripal was found collapsed on a bench with the woman in the riverfront shopping district in the cathedral city of Salisbury.

(...)

Skripal was a Russian army colonel who worked for the army inteligence unit known as the GRU. He was arrested in 2006 for passing information to the British about Russian spies dating back to the 1990s. The FSB, the notorious successor to the KGB, claimed that Skripal was recruited by the British in the mid-1990s and was paid up to $100,000 into a bank account in Spain for a decade's worth of spying.

Italy's joins long list of elections influenced by Russia. Sputnik will do what Sputnik does. The question is: what are our democracies going to do about it? Will voters repudiate candidates who seek to benefit from Russian interference? https://t.co/JbFe35Sw5n

— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) March 5, 2018

Madame "Nudge" Sunstein speaks out


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

RyanAir is threatening to ground planes after Britain leaves the EU to persuade voters to "rethink" Brexit. Chief Executive Michael O'Leary wants Britons to realize "they are no longer going to have cheap holidays."

I.R.M, S.J.R. and S.O.M. (A minor suing by her Mother and Next Friend S.J.R.) v. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland and the Attorney General
Judgment of the Court delivered by the Chief Justice on the 7th March, 2018

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

archived
Spain jails rappers

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

London is the cheapest it has been for overseas visitors in more than two decades as a consequence of Brexit, according to a report.

The study by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that British cities have dropped to their cheapest levels internationally since at least the 1990s. It said the sharp fall in the pound after the EU referendum - still more than 6% lower than it was on the eve of the vote - had sent London and Manchester sharply down the rankings.

Analysing a basket of more than 150 goods in 133 cities around the world, the report found London was now almost a third cheaper than Paris to visit, and almost a 10th cheaper than Dublin.

Spain, Simple Lógica poll:

Cs-ALDE: 30% (+1)
PSOE-S&D: 21%
PP-EPP: 20% (-2)
UP-LEFT: 17%

Field work: 1/03/18 - 7/03/18
Sample size: 1,076

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) 16. März 2018

Clare Moody
MEP, UK, Southwest and Gibraltar

europarl.europa.eu, groups, affiliations, assignments, twitter product
claremoodymep, constituency website
votewatch.eu | Clare Moody, vote record

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

UK's commitment on market access `is beyond doubt', Picardo tells Parliament 17 Mar
"Beyond 2020, the UK and Gibraltar were already working on a new framework to replace the current single market mechanisms that will end in 2020 once the transitional period expires, Parliament was told. ... 'This is an important advantage for Gibraltar as no other EU jurisdiction at all can boast such a clear and unequivocal statement of continued market access post Brexit.' "

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

MPs reportedly intend to board a fishing boat on Wednesday and throw a full box of haddock, skate, and bass to oppose what they say is May's "abject betrayal," namely over the Brexit pledge that the UK would gain back control of its waters once it quit the bloc.

Rees-Mogg, however, dismissed the rumors that he would be spearheading the vessel protest, saying: "I am not a fish thrower."

"Am I going to change my name to Captain Haddock?" he told LBC.

In just the past few years, pension funds (private pension funds have been almost completely eliminated) have radically reformed the role of shareholder opinion in executive compensation, successfully lobbying for the inclusion of "say-on-pay" votes in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and for mandatory disclosure of the chief executive/worker pay ratio. Pensions have also played the most prominent role in vivifying corporate voting, long an oxymoron. Because of a campaign run by New York City's pension funds and others, hundreds of companies now offer significant, long-term shareholders a meaningful opportunity to put their own board candidates on a corporate ballot.

EU offers only free trade deal to post-Brexit UK
"The EU offered a classic free trade agreement covering limited services and with zero tariffs and no quotas on goods to the UK for the post-Brexit period, in draft guidelines published on Wednesday (7 March), prepared for the next phase of negotiations."

EU offers UK limited trade deal, no special access for banks (no passport)
" 'Britain's financial firms would only be allowed to operate in the EU 'under host state rules' and be treated according to 'the fact that the UK will become a third country and the Union and the UK will no longer share a common regulatory, supervisory, enforcement and judiciary framework.'"

Britain says financial services must be in Brexit deal after EU rejects plan (same no deal)

Gibraltar has deep ties to London's financial services market, making these developments important to the Rock too. [...] The draft guidelines published yesterday made no explicit mention of Gibraltar but referred to earlier negotiating positions that included the controversial Spanish veto, adding that these still applied.

In the beginning of 2016 on his visit to Latvia to reassure the Baltic states of security in light of the increasingly aggressive confrontation between US and Russia, the Vice President Joe Biden had a message for the local elites. "Justice systems must be equitable and efficient and transparent," he told the gathering at the Latvian National Library, the pride for many Latvians. "And in a moment when Russia seeks to use corruption as a tool of coercion and influence around the globe, rooting out corruption is essential to preserve your national sovereignty. It's a cancer to the body politic. It's among the highest acts of patriotism to root it out.

These are the top six cyber-security focused firms who submit publicly available annual reports. We can see they have a combined revenue of $9.8 billion, with a sales and marketing expenditure of $4.1 billion.

Obamas reportedly in talks with Netflix about developing a series
who didn't see this coming?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

RLY?

Verified Voting a/o FEB 2018
Push to bolster election security stalls in Senate
"Lankford's amendment, provided to The Hill by an aide, aimed to improve the flow of information between federal officials and state officials involved in administering elections."
The CIA Democrats: I, II, III

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Tuesday that its leader, Kim Jong-un, has held an "openhearted talk" with visiting envoys from South Korea, reaching a "satisfactory agreement" about holding an inter-Korean summit meeting with the South's president, Moon Jae-in.

Mr. Kim spent more than four hours with the South Korean envoys, including Mr. Moon's national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong. They met in talks and over a dinner held on Monday in the headquarters of the North's ruling Workers' Party in Pyongyang, the North's capital, Mr. Moon's office said on Tuesday.

South Korean officials said the talks with Mr. Kim were "not disappointing."

The 10 members of the delegation led by Mr. Chung are the first South Korean officials to meet Mr. Kim since he took power six years ago. The South Korean envoys have hoped to persuade Mr. Kim to start a dialogue with the United States on ending the North's nuclear weapons program.

Vote in South Africa's parliament moves land reform closer 27 FEB

Sisulu urges international community to back land reform 4 MAR

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

An Israeli borrower won relief from the Supreme Court and now owes just 22 million shekels after running up a debt of no less than 1.6 trillion shekels ($460 billion) on a loan he took out decades ago

Back on the campaign trail last year, Krasner, a former civil rights and criminal defense attorney who had been best known for suing police officers, offered a stump speech that condemned the criminal justice system for being racist and for criminalizing poverty and addiction. He was an unusual candidate to be the city's top law enforcer. Voters swept him into office. Now, two months into his term, DA Krasner is virtually undistinguishable from candidate Krasner.

On Tuesday, Krasner issued a memo to his staff making official a wave of new policies he had announced his attorneys last month. The memo starts: "These policies are an effort to end mass incarceration and bring balance back to sentencing."

"These policies are an effort to end mass incarceration and bring balance back to sentencing," Larry Krasner said in an announcement on Tuesday.
The most significant and groundbreaking reform is how he has instructed assistant district attorneys to wield their most powerful tool: plea offers. Over 90 percent of criminal cases nationwide are decided in plea bargains, a system which has been broken beyond repair by mandatory minimum sentences and standardized prosecutorial excess. In an about-face from how these transactions typically work, Krasner's 300 lawyers are to start many plea offers at the low end of sentencing guidelines. For most nonviolent and nonsexual crimes, or economic crimes below a $50,000 threshold, Krasner's lawyers are now to offer defendants sentences below the bottom end of the state's guidelines. So, for example, if a person with no prior convictions is accused of breaking into a store at night and emptying the cash register, he would normally face up to 14 months in jail. Under Krasner's paradigm, he'll be offered probation. If prosecutors want to use their discretion to deviate from these guidelines, say if a person has a particularly troubling rap sheet, Krasner must personally sign off.

The 852-tonne (950-ton) section of the FIU-Sweetwater University City Bridge was built adjacent to the eight-lane Southwest Eight Street using accelerated bridge construction (ABC) methods, which are being advanced at FIU's Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC).

The main span of the bridge was installed in a few hours over the weekend, with limited disruption to traffic. The bridge was designed by Figg Bridge Engineers and built by MCM. Barnhart Crane & Rigging operated the self-propelled modular transporters that placed the bridge on its permanent supports.

"This project is an outstanding example of the ABC method," said ABC-UTC director Atorod Azizinamini, who is also chair of FIU's civil and environmental engineering department. "Building the major element of the bridge - its main span superstructure - outside of the travelled way and away from busy Eighth Street is a milestone."

A brand-new pedestrian bridge collapsed onto a highway at a Miami-area college Thursday, crushing at least five vehicles. Several people were seen being loaded into ambulances and authorities said they were searching for people.

Republican State Rep. Harry Shiver (64th District) said Alabama lawmakers need to protect "our ladies" by not arming teachers because most of them are females who are "scared of guns."

A national high committee, assembled by Palestinian factions in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, announced on Saturday that it was coordinating a number of events that would culminate in a major a protest march that would demand the right of return for Palestinians.

The events and demonstrations aim to reject any attempts to eliminate the Palestinian cause. It also seeks to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip, which Israel imposed 11 years ago.

[...]

He pointed out that the major rally will coincide with a broad regional and international political move, with the participation of individuals, institutions and Palestinian, Arab and international bodies supporting the cause.

He added that preparations are underway for millions of Palestinians to participate from Gaza, the West Bank and diaspora.

It is the sum of all fears of Israel's ruling right. It is a weapon against which one of the world's most powerful, advanced militaries is at a loss.

It could succeed where suicide bombings, ballistic missile barrages, and sophisticated attack tunnels have failed. And it's coming on Passover, just over a week away.

It's non-violence.

Beginning on the day of the Passover seder, just a week from this Friday, Palestinians plan mass marches toward Israeli and Israeli-held territory, as well as sit-ins and vigils. They will press for Israeli and world attention to UN Resolution 194, the legal basis for what is known as the Palestinian Right of Return.

The plan is this: They will be unarmed. They will not throw stones. They will be organized by family clans rather than militant groups. They will avoid clashes with Israeli troops.

And Israel, with its layers of defenses against attacks from space, cyberspace, nuclear submarines, and every manner of killing machine devised by man, is unprepared.

Yes, bacon really is killing us  - Guardian

The health risk of bacon is largely to do with two food additives: potassium nitrate (also known as saltpetre) and sodium nitrite. It is these that give salamis, bacons and cooked hams their alluring pink colour. Saltpetre - sometimes called sal prunella - has been used in some recipes for salted meats since ancient times. As Jane Grigson explains in Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, saltpetre was traditionally used when brining hams to give them "an attractive rosy appearance when otherwise it would be a murky greyish brown".

In earlier centuries, bacon-makers who used saltpetre did not understand that it converts to nitrite as the meat cures. It is this nitrite that allows the bacteria responsible for cured flavour to emerge quicker, by inhibiting the growth of other bacteria. But in the early 20th century, the meat industry found that the production of cured meats could be streamlined by adding sodium nitrite to the pork in pure form. In trade journals of the 1960s, the firms who sold nitrite powders to ham-makers spoke quite openly about how the main advantage was to increase profit margins by speeding up production. One French brand of sodium nitrite from the 60s was called Vitorose or "quick-pink".

Nitro-chemicals have been less of a boon to consumers. In and of themselves, these chemicals are not carcinogenic. After all, nitrate is naturally present in many green vegetables, including celery and spinach, something that bacon manufacturers often jubilantly point out. As one British bacon-maker told me, "There's nitrate in lettuce and no one is telling us not to eat that!"

But something different happens when nitrates are used in meat processing. When nitrates interact with certain components in red meat (haem iron, amines and amides), they form N-nitroso compounds, which cause cancer. The best known of these compounds is nitrosamine. This, as Guillaume Coudray explained to me in an email, is known to be "carcinogenic even at a very low dose". Any time someone eats bacon, ham or other processed meat, their gut receives a dose of nitrosamines, which damage the cells in the lining of the bowel, and can lead to cancer.

You would not know it from the way bacon is sold, but scientists have known nitrosamines are carcinogenic for a very long time. More than 60 years ago, in 1956, two British researchers called Peter Magee and John Barnes found that when rats were fed dimethyl nitrosamine, they developed malignant liver tumours. By the 1970s, animal studies showed that small, repeated doses of nitrosamines and nitrosamides - exactly the kind of regular dose a person might have when eating a daily breakfast of bacon - were found to cause tumours in many organs including the liver, stomach, oesophagus, intestines, bladder, brain, lungs and kidneys.

It's been a bad week for the U.S. coal industry. On Monday, Michigan-based Consumers Energy announced that it planned to close all its remaining coal-fired generation by 2040; the company already had closed seven of its 12 coal plants in 2016.

Then, on Tuesday, Vectren, an electric and gas utility serving parts of Indiana and Ohio, said it planned to retire three of its coal-fired plants and sell its ownership stake in a fourth by 2023; this from a company that just two years ago was dependent on coal for 90 percent of its generation.

But this week is hardly unique. Just last Friday, FirstEnergy said it was going to close or sell the 1,300 megawatt coal-fired Pleasants plant in West Virginia by Jan. 1, 2019 after being unable to convince federal regulators to approve a deal between two of the Akron, Ohio-based holding company's subsidiaries that effectively would have moved the facility from the open market into rate base, forcing consumers to pay for the plant even if it was no longer economic.

Not to be forgotten, earlier this month, AEP announced plans to slash its carbon dioxide emissions 60 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050 (based on a 2000 baseline, see my story here). And finally, on Jan. 30, PPL announced plans to reduce its CO2 emissions by 70 percent by 2050 (based on a 2010 baseline).

So, in reality, it's been a bad month, and similar months are likely moving forward.

Over the next three years, the U.S. will cover 80 percent of the world's demand growth, the IEA says in its newly-released Oil 2018 annual report. Canada, Brazil and Norway will cover the remainder, leaving no room for more OPEC supply.

The irony is that the substantial gains in output from shale will only be possible because of the OPEC cuts, which has tightened the market and boosted prices. This fact is not lost on OPEC producers. "If you are a shale oil producer, who brought you back? It was OPEC," the UAE's oil minister Suhail Al Mazrouei, said at a recent industry conference, according to Bloomberg. "Without OPEC there'd be chaos in the market."

Indeed, the IEA's new report paints a pretty gloomy picture for OPEC members, who are hoping to phase out their supply cuts after this year. With non-OPEC supply rising quickly, particularly in the U.S., OPEC may struggle to figure out a way to increase output without pushing down prices, according to the IEA's analysis.

That could put pressure on the cartel to keep the production cuts in place for longer than they had wanted, although it seems hard to imagine they maintain the production ceilings for another three or four years. Doing so would mean handicapping themselves and ceding even more market share to U.S. shale and other non-OPEC producers. Still, it is unclear how this plays out - returning to full production, even if phased in gradually, presents its own problems, if the IEA's forecast is accurate.

Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers.

The BBC's North America technology reporter Dave Lee saw it in action.

Zooming down the road to mass unemployment.

Correction: March 7, 2018
Because of an editing error involving a satirical text-swapping web browser extension, an earlier version of this article misquoted a passage from an article by the Times reporter Jim Tankersley. The sentence referred to America's narrowing trade deficit during "the Great Recession," not during "the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks."

26. Sheridan County, Montana

• Religious service attendance: 108.7.% of county pop.
  
• Religious service attendance: 38.1% of state pop. (11th lowest)
  
• Congregations in county: 77 per 10,000 people
  
• Congregations in state: 18 per 10,000 people (9th highest)
  

[...]
Because some religious Americans travel to churches, synagogues, and mosques outside of their home county to worship -- often to megachurches with attendance in the thousands -- many of the counties on this list claim more religious adherents than their total population. In the independent city of Fredericksburg, a small urban county equivalent in Virginia that is home to a branch of the Lifepoint Church, the number of people who attend religious services in the county is nearly double the county's total population....

Hours after an armed teacher in a Northern California classroom fired a gun and injured a student, the head of the National Rifle Association proposed placing a second armed teacher in every classroom, to shoot the first armed teacher before he or she can do harm.

"Had there been a second armed teacher in the classroom to shoot the first armed teacher, this regrettable incident would never have occurred," Wayne LaPierre said. "The only thing that stops a bad teacher with a gun is a good teacher with a gun."

The N.R.A. executive vice-president said, "In a perfect world, you would have a third armed teacher, in case the second one messes up, but right now I'd settle for two."

disambiguation:
Yesterday: March 12, 2018
"But her statement that, in the absence of a credible explanation, May will consider `that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom', suggests she is planning something much stronger than kicking out a few diplomats.

Today -100: March 13, 1918: Of prohibition, POWs, and inebriates
"The article neglects to say what the actual legal charge was."


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

15 years ago today Robin Cook had the courage to stand up to Bush and Blair's war. He died soon after, but I'll never forget him. https://t.co/aDoEoZJRDh

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) 17. März 2018

"Riding a wave of empowerment feminism ..."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

the United States alleges that Defendant, the City of Houston, Texas ("Defendant" or "the City"), has engaged in sex discrimination in violation of Title VII when it subjected former firefighters Jane Draycott ("Draycott") and Paula Keyes ("Keyes") to a hostile work environment based on their sex.

53. Eight days after she filed her complaint, on July 7, 2009, Draycott arrived to work and discovered sex-based and racial slurs written throughout the women's dormitory in black permanent marker. The slurs were directed at Draycott, who is white; Draycott's children; and Keyes, who is African-American.
[...]
55. The following slurs were written in the women's dormitory: a. "Niggar lover" and "Die bitch" were written on the wall above Draycott's desk, which had a picture of her two children; b. On the wall to the left of Draycott's locker, "die bitch" was written; c. On the wall above Keyes' desk and on her pull down bed, "die niggar" was written;
[...]
73. During the January 13, 2010 Roll Call meeting, several firefighters publicly disparaged Draycott and expressed their desire that she not return to Station 54 because of her complaints. During this meeting, Captain Williamson and other firefighters read statements alleging that Draycott was not mentally stable enough to "back the guys up on the line" and "no one wanted her back" because of her past complaints and fear that she would file future complaints, among others.

Bestätigt meinen Verdacht. #SchwarzeNull und #Nulldefizit sind Teil eines religiösen Kults einer dubiosen Sekte. pic.twitter.com/oDkwNackcn

— StephanEwald 🇦🇹 #MAGA (@StephanEwald) 9. März 2018

Tributes poured in on Wednesday to Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions. He died at the age of 76 in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

In a statement that confirmed his death at home in Cambridge, Hawking's children said: "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

"He once said: `It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him for ever."