Caterpillar to close facilities, could cut 880 jobs

Gotta squeeze more profits for poor struggling banks and bond holders. CHICAGO (Reuters) – Caterpillar Inc will close two facilities and is contemplating the closure of its engine manufacturing plant in Illinois, which together could potentially result in about 880 job losses, a company spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.

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Police launch murder inquiry over death of Nikolai Glushkov

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Met announces move after pathologist’s report on death of Russian exile in London this week

Police have launched a murder investigation into the death of the Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov.

Scotland Yard announced the move after receiving a pathologist’s report that gave the cause of death as compression to the neck.

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Top Bottled Water Brands Contaminated with Plastic Particles: Report

By Editor, Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
Mar 15 2018 (The Sunday Times – Sri Lanka)

The world’s leading brands of bottled water are contaminated with tiny plastic particles that are likely seeping in during the packaging process, according to a major study across nine countries published Wednesday.

“Widespread contamination” with plastic was found in the study, led by microplastic researcher Sherri Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia, according to a summary released by Orb Media, a US-based non-profit media collective.

Researchers tested 250 bottles of water in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand, and the United States.

Plastic was identified in 93 percent of the samples, which included major name brands such as Aqua, Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life and San Pellegrino.

The plastic debris included polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used to make bottle caps.

“In this study, 65 percent of the particles we found were actually fragments and not fibers,” Mason told AFP.

“I think it is coming through the process of bottling the water. I think that most of the plastic that we are seeing is coming from the bottle itself, it is coming from the cap, it is coming from the industrial process of bottling the water.”

Particle concentration ranged from “zero to more than 10,000 likely plastic particles in a single bottle,” said the report.

On average, plastic particles in the 100 micron (0.10 millimeter) size range — considered “microplastics,” — were found at an average rate of 10.4 plastic particles per liter.

Even smaller particles were more common — averaging about 325 per liter.

Other brands that were found to contain plastic contaminated included Bisleri, Epura, Gerolsteiner, Minalba and Wahaha.

Experts cautioned that the extent of the risk to human health posed by such contamination remains unclear.

“There are connections to increases in certain kinds of cancer to lower sperm count to increases in conditions like ADHD and autism,” said Mason.

“We know that they are connected to these synthetic chemicals in the environment and we know that plastics are providing kind of a means to get those chemicals into our bodies.”

– Time to ditch plastic? –

Previous research by Orb Media has found plastic particles in tap water, too, but on a smaller scale.

“Tap water, by and large, is much safer than bottled water,” said Mason.

The three-month study used a technique developed by the University of East Anglia’s School of Chemistry to “see” microplastic particles by staining them using fluorescent Nile Red dye, which makes plastic fluorescent when irradiated with blue light.

“We have been involved with independently reviewing the findings and methodology to ensure the study is robust and credible,” said lead researcher Andrew Mayes, from UEA’s School of Chemistry.

“The results stack up.”

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for North America at Oceana, a marine advocacy group that was not involved in the research, said the study provides more evidence that society must abandon the ubiquitous use of plastic water bottles.

“We know plastics are building-up in marine animals, and this means we too are being exposed, some of us, every day,” she said.

“It’s more urgent now than ever before to make plastic water bottles a thing of the past.”

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The post Top Bottled Water Brands Contaminated with Plastic Particles: Report appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nos matan porque pueden

Shameful, sham men kill women because they can…

Por negra, por lesbiana, por feminista, por haber salido de la favela, por estudiar, por obtener un título, por investigar, por política, por pensar, por denunciar la violencia policial, por mujer. ¡Marielle Franco, presente! Por querer fumar un porro, jorobar un rato, ratearse del colegio, por adolescente, por confiada. ¡Lucía Perez, presente! Por no querer…

The post Nos matan porque pueden appeared first on Cosecha Roja.

English classes aren’t a cure-all for racial inequality and division in Britain

Everyone speak, read, write which English? Londoner, Cockney, Scotch, Midlander, Dockside? Wanger English? What a toady idea.

Media Diversified

Maya Goodfellow discusses the idea of teaching English to migrants for the purposes of ‘integration’

Some myths refuse to die: austerity is a public necessity or the British Empire did a lot this country can be proud of. Periodically these ideas float to the surface of public discourse and produce the same, predictable flurry of conversation. This week, dressed up in one of its many different forms, it’s that immigrants, people of colour and specifically Muslims undermine ‘community cohesion’.

Cue the government’s former integration tsar, Louise Casey. This week she’s demanded the government set a target date for “everybody in the country” to speak English for the purposes of integration. In an effort to respond, Sajid Javid pledged to expand the teaching of English for immigrants after claiming 770,000 people in England can’t speak English.  This is a tired old tune – in 2011 David Cameron said immigrants who couldn’t speak English…

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It’s official: Democrat Conor Lamb wins Pennsylvania special election in major upset

It’s official: Democrat Conor Lamb wins Pennsylvania special election in major upset:

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In a stunning upset, Democrat Conor Lamb won an incredibly close special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, beating out Republican candidate Rick Saccone in a deeply conservative district the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rated R+11.

The race stretched into Wednesday midday, when CNN reported Lamb was in the lead with 627 votes, with 100 percent of precincts reporting. State law does not mandate a recount in district-level elections.

Conventional wisdom suggested that Saccone — a candidate who once declared himself “Trump before Trump was Trump” — would do well in a district that turned out in droves for President Donald Trump in 2016. But in recent weeks, Republicans were in full panic mode, dumping more than $9 million into the race. Lamb’s victory shows they were right to be so worried.

And it wasn’t just Republicans who feared losing this district — it was Trump himself.

In many ways, PA-18 was emblematic of Trump’s presidential success story; the president carried the district by 20 points in 2016, along with much of the rest of western Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was one of the blue-collar Rust Belt states he was never supposed to win but won anyway, in a stunning rebuke to Hillary Clinton.

Along with Wisconsin and Michigan, the Keystone State carried Trump to victory on Election Day 2016. It’s a story he often recounts at rallies, including the one he held for Saccone in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

Voting for Saccone is exactly what the president wanted his supporters to do. Trump cared enough about Saccone winning that he joined him on the campaign trail multiple times and sent Vice President Mike Pence and members of his family, including son Donald Trump Jr. and daughter Ivanka Trump, to stump.

He even pushed a controversial announcement on steel and aluminum import tariffs so it would land a week before the special election.

None of it worked.

Trump voters ended up either staying home or proving they could just as easily cast their votes for a Democrat with the right message, especially when Trump wasn’t the candidate on the ballot.

Conor Lamb won a district Democrats weren’t supposed to be competitive in

On its face, Tuesday’s special congressional election in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania was supposed to be a breeze for the GOP. The Cook Political Report rated the district R+11, due in part to partisan gerrymandering that the state Supreme Court recently ruled unconstitutional.

Political analysts in the state agreed that the district’s gerrymandering was part of the reason it was supposed to be impossible for Democrats to win. This is a seat that used to be so solidly Republican that Democrats didn’t even bother competing in it.

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For the record, there are 119 GOP held districts that are LESS RED THAN THIS DISTRICT.

Keep this up, keep voting, and canvassing in every district and every race, hold them accountable for their traitorous and inhumane actions.

For the first time, we have a Democratic challenger in every single district, even the deepest red ones.