Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

German leaders approve new COVID curbs for unvaccinated | News | DW | 02.12.2021

Federal and state leaders agreed to the following:

  • Shops, restaurants, museums, movie theaters for vaccinated or recovered people only
  • Additional tests for the vaccinated
  • Bundestag to vote on mandatory vaccines in early 2022
  • Nightclubs, music venues to close in areas where incidence rate hits 350
  • New measures will take effect once approved by lawmakers, likely in the coming days
  • A maximum of 15,000 spectators will be allowed in football stadiums
  • Indoor sports venues will have a maximum of 5,000 in attendance
  • Private gatherings for unvaccinated will be limited to one household
  • Mask requirements in schools

Source: German leaders approve new COVID curbs for unvaccinated | News | DW | 02.12.2021

Canada votes to ban LGBTQ ‘conversion therapy’ | LGBT rights | The Guardian

Canadian lawmakers have passed a motion banning the discredited practice of “conversion therapy”, in a rare show of unanimity in the country’s parliament.

A surprise motion on Wednesday by the opposition Conservatives to fast-track the legislation prompted applause in the House of Commons. A handful of Liberal cabinet ministers hugged their Conservative colleagues after the vote.

“I dream of the day when LGBTQ2 issues are no longer political footballs. And we are one day closer to that future,” said Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault, who is gay.

Canada’s justice minister, David Lametti, praised the Conservatives for bringing the motion forward.

“There are clearly people in the Conservative caucus who exercised a great deal of leadership on the issue, and I thank them,” he said. “This is what we can do when parliament works together.”

Source: Canada votes to ban LGBTQ ‘conversion therapy’ | LGBT rights | The Guardian

Chilean environmental activist who opposed dam projects found dead | Global development | The Guardian

Environmental activists in Chile have called for justice after a 42-year-old land defender was found dead with her hands and feet bound.

The body of Javiera Rojas was found buried under a pile of clothes in an abandoned house on Sunday in Calama in the northern region of Antofagasta.

Rojas was well known in northern Chile for her participation in protests against the Prime Thermoelectric project. She was also involved in the successful campaign to cancel the construction of the Tranca dam in 2016, which threatened to harm local wildlife and rob communities of water access.

Two men, including Rojas’s partner, have been placed under preventive arrest while a 200-day investigation is carried out.

Politicians have called on prosecutors to investigate the circumstances of her death. “Whether the result of femicide or because of her activism, it is very serious,” tweeted the Antofagasta deputy Catalina Pérez.

Source: Chilean environmental activist who opposed dam projects found dead | Global development | The Guardian

Tennessee rejects complaint filed under anti-critical race theory law – The Jerusalem Post (Me: Renewed racism pushed in US by “Moms for Liberty”)

…Moms for Liberty took issue with the Wit and Wisdom curriculum for Second Grade, pointing specifically to three books and the teacher manuals accompanying them: “Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washington,” “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story” and “The Story of Ruby Bridges.”
Bridges was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

ON AUGUST 28, 1963, nearly 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs.  (credit: Wikimedia Commons)ON AUGUST 28, 1963, nearly 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The movement claimed that the books and teacher manuals taught that “people of color continue to be oppressed by an oppressive ‘angry, vicious, scary, mean, loud, violent, [rude] and [hateful]’ white population and teaches that the racial injustice of the 1960s exists today.”
The movement also claimed that second graders were being exposed to a “high level of manipulation” by the educational material on the civil rights movement, which it said “focuses repeatedly and daily on very dark and divisive slivers of American history…without highlighting the positive achievements, like unity and the overall improvement of our country.”
“The relentless nature of how these divisive stories are taught, the lack of historical context and difference in perspective, and the manipulative pedagogy all work together to amplify and sow feelings of resentment, shame of one’s skin color and/or fear,” wrote Moms for Liberty in the complaint.
The movement did not specify what “different perspective” concerning the civil rights movement they felt was lacking.
The complaint pointed to a number of specific issues in the books and teacher manuals which it claimed were examples of “explicit and implicit indoctrination,” including photos showing examples of racial discrimination, such as white firemen blasting black children with firehoses and segregated water fountains, and teaching instructions, such as emphasizing how the N word is still used as a racial slur and using word injustice to describe racial discrimination…

Source: Tennessee rejects complaint filed under anti-critical race theory law – The Jerusalem Post

Californian Firm Touts ‘Mushroom Leather’ as Sustainability Gamechanger – Slashdot (Me: almost every industrialized “natural” process signals imbalance to nature and nature then attempts to rebalance via viruses and bacteria that can also decimate people and other animals, insects, reptiles…)

Fine Mycelium, a patented material which can be grown from fungi in trays in a matter of weeks, replicates the appearance and feel of leather while outperforming it in strength and durability. The material recently made its high fashion debut as an exclusive HermÃs handbag. “It can give the same emotional response as an animal leather. It has that hand-feel of rarity,” says Scullin. On a planet of finite natural resources, Scullin believes both the technology and the mindset of carbon-neutral, grown-to-order mushroom leather could be “revolutionary” — and have implications for innovation in manufacture beyond fashion…. Source: Californian Firm Touts ‘Mushroom Leather’ as Sustainability Gamechanger – Slashdot

‘On the Run Again’: Has US White Supremacist Rob Rundo Returned to Serbia? – bellingcat

That afternoon, Rundo posted and then hastily deleted a photo of himself from his Telegram channel; Bellingcat was able to download it before it disappeared. One incomplete word of graffiti in that photo led Bellingcat to an apartment building in Belgrade, and right to Rundo himself. Despite being expelled and banned from Serbia — for three years, according to media reports — it looks like Robert Rundo is back in Belgrade, the country’s capital.

A photo posted on Robert Rundo’s Telegram channel of more than 10,000 followers at 4:38pm on November 8, 2021. This photo, along with four others, was deleted seven minutes later at 4:45pm

Although he was “on the run,” in the words of one of his international far-right comrades, Bellingcat observed Rundo walking openly in the neighbourhood around the apartment building, his face and recognisable tattoos on display.

Source: ‘On the Run Again’: Has US White Supremacist Rob Rundo Returned to Serbia? – bellingcat