Global
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's junta-appointed Election Commission
disqualified a princess from running for prime minister in next
month's polls, after her surprise candidacy displeased her powerful
brother King Maha Vajiralongkorn and dangerously divided this country.
"All members of the royal family must abide by the king's principle of
staying above politics, maintaining political impartiality, and they
cannot take up political office," the commission said February 11.
The coup-installed military government meanwhile was investigating an
allegedly forged official document which appeared on social media
claiming Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha fired Army Chief Gen. Apirat
Kongsompong and other armed forces officers.
"Rumors. We are investigating. Fake news," Mr. Prayuth told reporters
February 11, referring to the alleged document which sparked Twitter
to trend #coup February 10 night.
Tanks rumbling through Lopburi city's streets tried to calm the public
by pasting pieces of paper saying "For Training" on the tanks' metal
sides.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Gene editing tools such as CRISPR are helping
researchers who hope to cure cancer and other problems involving DNA,
but "making embryos in a dish" is a much easier way to check for
mutations before implanting an embryo in a mother's uterus, according
to an American Cancer Society professor.
"Gene editing, or CRISPR, is enormously helpful for us at the research
level," said Mary-Clare King, American Cancer Society professor of
Genome Sciences and Medicine at Seattle's University of Washington.
"We work with CRISPR using cells in plates. We alter the cells and we
see what works, and what doesn't, by way of treating the cells that
we've altered. I think of it as a research tool," Ms. King said in an
interview on February 1.
"I don't think of it as a tool that will ever be deployed for actually
correcting these kinds of cells, because there are a lot of easier
ways to do it."
Ms. King was visiting Bangkok to receive Thailand's annual Prince
Mahidol Award along with three other recipients for their work in
medicine and public health.
Reader Supported News
04 February 19
In 1985, an activist for the relatives of the disappeared [persons in Guatemala], named Rosario Godoy, was abducted by the army. She was raped. Her mutilated body was found alongside that of her baby. The baby’s fingernails had been torn out. The Guatemalan army, when asked about this atrocity, said, “Oh, they died in a traffic accident.”
When [US human rights official] Elliott Abrams was asked about this accident, he affirmed also that they died in a traffic accident. This activist raped and mutilated, the baby with his fingernails pulled out, Abrams says it’s a traffic accident.
– Allan Nairn, on Democracy NOW January 30, 2019
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The death in South Korea of a World War II sex
slave "comfort woman" has reopened demands for Tokyo to pay more
reparations for allowing its troops to rape thousands of imprisoned
Asian women.
The death from cancer of 92-year-old Kim Bok-dong on January 28
silenced a woman who, for almost 30 years, led weekly protests for
more compensation in front of the Japanese Embassy's wartime location
in Seoul.
The Japan's military enslaved Ms. Kim and thousands of other Asian
females as "comfort women" who were forced to provide sexual services
to Japanese troops during the war.
Up to 200,000 females, most of them teenagers, were raped while
imprisoned by Japan's military in China, Korea, Taiwan, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, according to
London-based Amnesty International.
In 2005, the human rights organization brought Lee Yong Soo and
another so-called "comfort woman" here to Bangkok during the
publication of Amnesty International's report titled, "Justice for
Survivors of Japan's Military Sexual Slavery System".
Friends, fellow inhabitants of planet Earth, I’m not breaking up with you. I just think maybe we ought to see other species for a while. You like dogs, right?
I’ve spent so many years trying to talk with you, and you haven’t heard anything. So, we have the same conversation over and over and over. Let’s just take a little amicable break, OK?
Unit One is now SHUT!!!
PG&E is BANKRUPT!!!
GOV. NEWSOM MUST TEST FOR:
EMBRITTLEMENT, CRACKING, DEFERRED MAINTENANCE
HOLD HEARINGS ON EARTHQUAKES, WASTE,
PG&E'S COMPETENCE, NEED FOR POWER
BEFORE UNIT ONE REFUELS
write him at Capitol, Sacramento 95814
call him: (916)445-2841; fax 558-3160
sign: https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/gov-newsom-test-diablo
History in blackface slaps the present moment awake.
What? The governor put that picture on his yearbook page? In 1984? The wave of outrage, the demand for his resignation — from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s own party, the Democrats — can’t be dismissed with a shrug and an apology. His career may be over, thanks not simply to an act of youthful stupidity but to the context that made it possible: good old American racism.
At the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, a U.S. panelist claimed that high taxes on the super-wealthy and economic growth had never coexisted in any country ever. The moderator and other panelists were ready to move on, but someone had made the mistake of allowing a guy on the panel who would blurt out the obvious, and he did so, pointing out that those two things had coexisted for decades in the United States up through the 1960s.
The St Louis River of Northern Minnesota will be as Vulnerable to Annihilation as were Brazil’s Rio Doce and Paraobeba Rivers (pictured below) – if the PolyMet Project is Allowed to Proceed
(Trying to understand why every Brazilian mining catastrophe has been blacked-out by the Duluth News-Tribune)
The photos and videos in this supplemental Duty to Warn column need to be viewed by everybody living downstream from the proposed PolyMet mine tailings lagoon – scheduled to be built near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota, a St Louis River river-town in northeast Minnesota. Hoyt Lakes is the northernmost of the 12 river towns on the St Louis River estuary which empties into Lake Superior, the least polluted of the Great Lakes. Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world (by surface area) and it contains 10% of the entire world’s remaining fresh water.
Tales from la Vida
ComFest will be collaborating with The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Library and Cartoon Museum and it's current exhibit, Tales From la Vida, for a special fund raising event on Sat. March 2nd from 1-5PM. We will be raising funds for (a yet undetermined) immigration support group. We will be offering an opening lecture with Frederick Luis Aldama, who curated the exhibit along with Jenny Robb. There will also be a series of curated tours of the exhibit.
Admission will also include access to the rest of the museum, which will be opened specifically for the event. The book, Tales From la Vida, A Latinx Anthology will be for sale. It was edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by The Ohio State University Press. ComFest and The Museum will have information tables.
Tales from la Vida: Latinx Comics: