The News
New York City have removed 110 trash cans and now the city’s rat problem is worse than ever. Since 2014 the city has seen a 38% increase in rat complaints in the city, despite Mayor de Blasio spending $32 million to try and fix the problem.
The rodents are attracted to overflowing trash cans, as it is an easy food source. Campaigners say the problem will not improve until a better system for the city’s garbage is put in place.
Read More: USA today
Since Daniel Craig announced he was standing down as James Bond, debate has raged whether the next 007 should be a woman, or black.
Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that she will be both – thanks to the intervention of feminist TV writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
In what’s been called a ‘popcorn-dropping moment’, British star Lashana Lynch, will be given Bond’s licence to kill in the 25th movie in the franchise, currently being shot in Italy and the UK.
Come in 007: British star Lashana Lynch walks in when the James Bond spy number is called
The story begins with Bond retired in Jamaica. But spymaster M – played by Ralph Fiennes – calls him back in desperation to tackle a new global crisis.
A movie insider said: ‘There is a pivotal scene at the start of the film where M says ‘Come in 007’, and in walks Lashana who is black, beautiful and a woman.
‘It’s a popcorn-dropping moment. Bond is still Bond but he’s been replaced as 007 by this stunning woman.
‘Bond, of course, is sexually attracted to the new female 007 and tries his usual seduction tricks, but is baffled when they don’t work on a brilliant, young black woman who basically rolls her eyes at him and has no interest in jumping into his bed. Well, certainly not at the beginning.’
The source added that the phrase ‘Bond girls’ is now forbidden, saying: ‘We were all told that from now on they are to be addressed as ‘Bond women’.’
Waller-Bridge, who wrote the BBC comedy Fleabag and the female-led thriller Killing Eve, was recruited to ensure the 57-year-old franchise moved with the times. She said: ‘There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not Bond is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women.
007: Daniel Craig in action in the new movie which promises to be packed with humour
‘I think that’s b******s. I think he’s absolutely relevant now. [The franchise] has just got to grow. It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to his character.’
Ms Lynch, 31, had a breakthrough role as the fighter pilot Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel, released earlier this year.
Originally from Hammersmith, West London, she made her debut in the 2011 drama Fast Girls, has appeared in Silent Witness and Death In Paradise and was a regular cast member on the short-lived 2015 BBC show Crims. She also played Rosaline Capulet in the American period drama series Still Star-Crossed, set after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet.
The source said: ‘Lashana is absolutely brilliant and Phoebe’s script is as sharp and funny as you would expect. This Bond pays tribute to some of the earlier films with a lot of humour.’
Indeed, one photograph taken on set shows Ms Lynch in a safari suit similar to the one Roger Moore famously wore when he played 007.
‘This is a Bond for the modern era who will appeal to a younger generation while sticking true to what we all expect in a Bond film,’ the source added. ‘There are spectacular chase sequences and fights, and Bond is still Bond but he’s having to learn to deal with the world of #MeToo.’
So hopefully the script will be the least of the problems for a film that has already been hit by the replacement of original director Danny Boyle, injury to Craig, and a crew member getting hurt in an explosion on set.
Con Edison is still baffled over what caused the weekend’s major blackout — and warned on Monday that more outages could be coming with a heat wave on the way.
“We expect that there could be service outages — those things happen during heat waves,” the power company’s chief spokesman, Mike Clendenin, said during a morning appearance on PIX11.
Insisting that the company invests $2 billion every year to prepare for soaring electricity demands when the mercury rises, Clendenin claimed Con Ed will be “prepared.”
“We know it’s going to be intense,” he said of forecasts predicting temperatures reaching 100 degrees this week. “This heat wave coming up is something else and we’ve got to get ready for it.”
But he admitted that engineers still have no idea what caused Saturday’s outage that left 73,000 without power in Manhattan.
“We are very, very focused on examining exactly what transpired and caused that outage,” Clendenin told the station, saying they have no idea why breakers “did not isolate the problem” of a “significant” transmission disturbance.
“There’s a lot of patience and poise that New Yorkers displayed during the outage itself. The same kind of patience and diligence is gonna be needed as engineers and experts dive into the date and actually analyze how equipment tripped off, or what went wrong, that led to the large outage,” said Clendenin. “Unfortunately, with outages like this, it takes a little bit of time and understanding.”
Confirming that the blackout was not connected to heat or overusage, he said that “fortunately, there was no major or extensive damage” — conceding that that would have left the power out for even longer.
Clendenin tried to shake off criticism of the company — with Gov. Andrew Cuomo warning Con Ed “can be replaced” — by insisting that it provides “the absolute best grid that New Yorkers expect and deserve.”
“In fact, New York’s grid is probably better than any other grid you’ll find anywhere else in the United States,” he told PIX11, saying they were “open to anyone’s ideas” on becoming even better.
Midtown Manhattan was surreal Saturday night.
The center of our little island is supposed to be the center of the universe — yet I am writing this after eating a lukewarm peach for dinner by (hot) candlelight in 90-degree temperatures with the windows shut tight, racing against time to finish it before my computer runs out of its last moments of electricity.
Yes, we want to be the center of finance, tech and media, but we cannot even keep the lights on for a Saturday evening. Meanwhile, our fearless leader, Mayor Bill de Blasio, is radioing it all in from Iowa, where they have plenty of power.
Yesterday, at about 7 p.m., the lights in our apartment just west of Midtown flickered — hard.
We had seen this before. This past winter — Feb. 16, to be exact — as my husband and I were eating dinner, our lights went out, then went back on.
We looked at each other and then suddenly, boom! A manhole had exploded right outside our window. The next two manholes exploded in succession, each boom rattling the windows harder, and sending our next-door neighbor, two small dogs in tow, over to ask what she should do.
Our answer: nothing. The entire street in front of us was in raging flames; even the firefighters were standing well behind their trucks, which were well behind the fire, waiting for a good half-hour for Con Ed to turn off the power before they could put water on it. We couldn’t evacuate directly into a fire; we just stood, far from the windows … and the lights didn’t go out.
That incident took, maybe, half an hour, but it has caused months of chaos since then. Con Ed has spent the last five months digging up our street — 50th Street, just a five-minute walk west of the business capital of the nation — and refilling it, sometimes digging and refilling on the same day, trying to replace yards of burned-out infrastructure across two blocks while still allowing car and truck traffic to snake by. They work during the day; they startle us by waking us up in the middle of the night with klieg lights.
I have no idea if a Saturday night 49th Street substation “incident” — not far from our little one in February — has anything to do with the fact that Con Ed has been desperately digging up our street, one block north, for half a year.
I do know that our infrastructure is fragile — and our emergency response is inadequate. Walking around Midtown Saturday evening was an exercise in picking which dystopia you wanted to focus on.
Thousands of people spilled out of canceled theater performances — spilling into streets and avenues, where they were vulnerable to a wave of cars, buses and trucks moving past nonworking traffic signals, should this have been a terror attack.
Diesel generators kicked in at the World Wide Plaza office building on the West Side, spewing toxic fumes for more than an hour into the windows of nearby elderly tenement residents just a few hundred feet away
Their choice was to shelter in the heat or breathe in poison — this, 12 years after New York supposedly designed a “sustainable” plan for the environment.
Times Square was half-dark and half-light, depending on what venues had invested in generators that, long-term, make the island even hotter for people without air conditioning.
The MTA did a truly heroic job in getting trains stuck in tunnels to the next station so that people could clamber upstairs, but the power cut in Midtown meant that a dozen lines — traveling from Brooklyn to The Bronx — were paralyzed. You weren’t going anywhere if couldn’t go through Manhattan.
A large part of Manhattan, New York, was plunged into blackness on Saturday after a major transformer exploded. More than 70,000 homes and businesses were left without power.
It is thought the power outage was caused by excessive load on a transformer, causing an explosion and then a fire at the transformer. Firefighters were called to a fire at 7pm.
In the 1970s a blackout lead to extensive looting and rioting. However last night’s blackout passed without major incident.
Read More: France 24
Scottsdale will be in court next week over its decision to block Satanists from leading invocation at the start of council meetings.
The Satanic Temple, an international Satanist group, has been asking councils across the country to lead their invocations.
Most councils have denied Satanists access to lead innovations by saying the calendar is already full, or by ending the tradition of opening with prayer. But Scottsdale council flatly refused. This has led to the lawsuit.
Read More: AZ Central
The American Psychological Association (APA) has set up a task force to study polygamy (or non-monogous relationships to give it its politically correct title). The APA hope the Division 44 task force, as it is called, will remove the stigma attached to such relationships.
They say on their website: “awareness and inclusivity about consensual non-monogamy and diverse expressions of intimate relationships.” Such relationships include but are not limited to: Polyamory, open relationships, swinging, relationship anarchy, and “other types of ethical, non-monogamous relationships.”
The APA have also set up another task force: the Religion and Spirituality Task Force. “The Task Force on Religion and Spirituality was created to encourage a confluence between sexual minority orientations and identities and religious experiences,” the page says. “It further attempts to create affirmation and acceptance for LGBT individuals of faith within theologically diverse ideological traditions. Given the importance of faith and even religious tradition in the lives of many LGBT individuals, the Committee seeks to reduce theological barriers often separating sexual minorities from the sources of their beliefs.”
However psychologist and member for 50 years of the APA, Daniel Boland says, “Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force” proves that the APA has abandoned the scientific tradition in favor of prevailing political and cultural pressures.
“In this entire arena of so-called transgenderism and affiliated conditions, the APA has abandoned all respect for fact-based research and scientific tradition,” Boland said in an email. “It has capitulated to the most unstable, most radical elements in our society. It has thereby nullified its once well-founded claim to represent health service providers. It abandonment of its original professionalism renders it no longer credible to the public or to its members.”
In recent years leftist media have been seeking to normalise and promote polygamy.
Read More: Daily Wire
The Federal Appeal court has ruled that the President’s new abortion-related restrictions can go ahead despite a number of law suits which are still being played out.
“We are greatly encouraged to see the 9th Circuit rule in favor of allowing President Trump’s Protect Life Rule to take effect while it continues to be litigated,” SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement.
Read More: Newsmax
California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would extend healthcare provision to illegal immigrants aged 19-25.
The bill will extend healthcare provision to around 90,000 individuals at an estimated cost of $98 million.
Read More: Daily Wire
Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo Montoya, the bishop of Buenaventura plans to take to the skies to exorcise his entire city. The area is plagued by violence, drug smuggling and poverty.
Montoya announced his decision to sprinkle the city with holy water after the murder and torture of a ten year old girl in the city.
He told local radio: “We have to drive the devil out of Buenaventura, to see if we can restore the peace and tranquility that our city has lost due to so many crimes, acts of corruption and with so much evil and drug trafficking that invades our port.
“We want to go around the whole of Buenaventura, from the air, and pour holy water on to it to see if we exorcise and get out all those demons that are destroying our port, so that God’s blessing comes and gets rid of all the wickedness that is in our streets.
Read More: The Guardian
Paris has followed London and hundreds of other cities globally declaring a “climate emergency”. On June 26th New York was the largest city to make such a declaration.
The move is largely symbolic. But the socialist mayor of Paris has already passed a number of laws to show her green credentials. These include significantly reducing traffic in the city, and implementing traffic bans at peak pollution times.
The new “climate emergency” declaration will see a Climate Academy set up to educate the public on environmental issues; and a team of scientists who will be called upon to advice on any legislation to be passed that will have an environmental impact.
Paris hosted the 2015 historic signing of the agreement to globally tackle climate change.
Read More: France 24
George Orwell was a brilliant individual. A man of incredible insight – and foresight.
In his unfathomably predictive novel 1984, Orwell warns of Big Brother:
“(O)stensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party Ingsoc wields total power ‘for its own sake’ over the inhabitants.
“In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens.…The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan ‘Big Brother is watching you’: a maxim that is ubiquitously on display.
“In modern culture, the term ‘Big Brother’ has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.”
As brilliant as Orwell was, something continuously struck me as incorrect as I read 1984.
Orwell’s government – was extraordinarily competent in its totalitarian imposition of technological power.
In Reality – no government in the history of man has ever been even remotely close to that competent.
For Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia to become Reality – Big Government would need private sector help.
Enter private sector Big Tech.
Big Tech has delivered much of the technology Orwell envisioned. As but one of many examples – Orwell’s telescreens:
“(D)evices that operate as televisions, security cameras, and microphones….(T)elescreens are used by the ruling Party in the totalitarian fictional State of Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania.”
We’re already all the way there – via Big Tech.
How Google and Amazon Are ‘Spying’ on You:
“The study found that digital assistants (Google Home and Amazon Echo) can be ‘awake’ even when users think they aren’t listening….
“(T)he devices listen all the time they are turned on – and Amazon has envisioned Alexa using that information to build profiles on anyone in the room….
“Amazon filed a patent application for an algorithm that would let future versions of the device identify statements of interest, such as ‘I love skiing’, enabling the speaker to be monitored based on their interests and targeted for related advertising.
“A Google patent application describes using a future release of it smart Home system to monitor and control everything from screen time and hygiene habits, to meal and travel schedules and other activities.
“The devices are envisioned as part of a surveillance web in the home to chart a families’ patterns….”
Why Google’s Spying on User Data Is Worse than the NSA’s
Is Amazon Spying on Users Through Alexa? Thousands of Employees Listen to Conversations
Amazon-Owned Ring Has Reportedly Been Spying on Customer Camera Feeds
Microsoft Windows 10 Is Spying on Almost Everything You Do
Eleven Insanely Creepy Ways Facebook Is Spying on You Right Now
This is ALL insanely creepy.
Big Tech is…insanely big.
Microsoft (Market Cap: $1.1 trillion)
Amazon (Market Cap: $942 billion)
Google (Market Cap: $775 billion)
Facebook (Market Cap: $550 billion)
These four spying companies – are currently worth a combined $3.7 trillion. Our nation’s entire economy – is $19.4 trillion.
Which mans these four companies – all by themselves – are worth 19% of the United States.
But it’s Big Tech doing the spying – not Big Government.
Anyone who looks at Big Tech’s all-encompassing spying ability and thinks Big Government is capable of doing anything remotely similar – hasn’t paid attention to the past 10,000 years of human history.
The ONLY way Big Government can impose Big Brother – is to partner with Big Tech.
Uh oh.
The Role of Tech Companies in Government Surveillance
Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
Four High-Tech Ways the Federal Government Is Spying on Private Citizens:
“Right now, the government is tracking the movements of private citizens by GPS, reading private citizens’ emails, and possibly even reading what you’re saying on Facebook.”
Big Tech once offered at least token resistance to Big Government’s demands – at least after being outed for acquiescing to Big Government’s demands.
Facebook, Amazon, Google Call for Government Surveillance Reform:
“It first gained attention after the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Congress is in the process of weighing reforms for the program. It must vote to renew Section 702 before the end of the year, otherwise it will expire.
“The letter, addressed to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asks Congress to consider several reforms to the program to ensure greater transparency and privacy protections.”
We can now officially refer to those – as the Good Old Days.
Why would Big Tech fight Big Government – when they can get paid to join them?
And the Big Government-Big Tech surveillance state – is getting closer and closer to home.
In fact – just outside…and inside it.
Amazon’s Helping Police Build a Surveillance Network with Ring Doorbells:
“Police departments across the country, from major cities like Houston to towns with fewer than 30,000 people, have offered free or discounted Ring doorbells to citizens, sometimes using taxpayer funds to pay for Amazon’s products.
“While Ring owners are supposed to have a choice on providing police footage, in some giveaways, police require recipients to turn over footage when requested….
“(T)he sheer number of cameras run by Amazon’s Ring business raises questions about privacy involving both law enforcement and tech giants….(C)ritics have pointed out the retail giant’s (other) ventures with law enforcement, like offering facial recognition tools….
“More than 50 local police departments across the US have partnered with Ring over the last two years, lauding how the Amazon-owned product allows them to access security footage in areas that typically don’t have cameras — on suburban doorsteps….
“‘What we have here is a perfect marriage between law enforcement and one of the world’s biggest companies creating conditions for a society that few people would want to be a part of,’ said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.”
That’s the outside of your home. Here’s the in….
The Government Just Admitted It Will Use Smart Home Devices for Spying:
“If you want evidence that US intelligence agencies aren’t losing surveillance abilities because of the rising use of encryption by tech companies, look no further than the testimony…by the (then) director of national intelligence, James Clapper….
“Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of….
“Privacy advocates have known about the potential for government to exploit the internet of things for years. Law enforcement agencies have taken notice too, increasingly serving court orders on companies for data they keep that citizens might not even know they are transmitting. Police have already been asking Google-owned company Dropcam for footage from cameras inside people’s homes meant to keep an eye on their kids.”
Orwell got the tech right – just not Big Government’s ability to create it for totalitarian ends.
Freedom has allowed for the free markets – that allowed the rise of the private sector Big Tech Orwell thought Big Government would produce.
And now Big Tech and Big Government are partnering – to end that freedom.
Well…for we plebeians, anyway.
I’m sure Big Tech and Big Government will be just fine.
Geologists have warned that the earthquake in South California on Thursday could trigger a larger quake in the region. The Ridgecrest quake has already seen a number of aftershocks, some has strong as 5.5.
The magnitude 6.4 quake was the largest to hit the region in 20 years. And has lead some scientists to warn could be the precursor to a much bigger quake.
Read More: Daily Mail