RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/May 2014

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May 2014[edit]

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19$5 million in bribe money was exchanged to get Qatar to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. So, so shocked!
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23 Bring on the comet, baby! Update: Meanwhile, Japan may be seriously considering opening its borders.
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35 Mariam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag has been sentenced to 100 lashes and death in Sudan for apostasy; and forced to give birth 'with her legs chained'. Amnesty International UK are running a petition, although the site seems to be overloaded right now.
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22SpaceX unveils the human-carrying version of their Dragon capsule. Now they only need to actually fly it... Update: Some more shiny pictures.
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18Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland: why hate Catholics when you can hate the UK's highest-ranking Chinese politician?
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17The war in Iraq still ain't over.
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6Remember the guy who didn't show up for NFL scouts because God told him he'd be drafted for sure if he didn't? It's a creepier story than you expect at first. Maybe his aunt now regrets saying "Are you going to trust in [doctors] or trust in God?"
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32RIP, Maya Angelou.
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-1"Somebody check if there's a 46Q with the surname 'Libby.'"
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21Gays shouldn't have the same rights to promote their viewpoints as everyone else. But I'm totally liberal, though.
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15Ukraine military gets its act together at Donetsk Airport. But note also the increased reports of Russians taking part without much effort at disguise. Update: Here we go again.
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12From the department of "It seemed liked a good idea at time," Shooting range gets liquor license.
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8Pray to God what the Chinese just did doesn't result in a war.
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12Glenn Greenwald is about to drop a bomb, apparently.
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27'Green' Billionaire Announces Plans to Go After 'Anti-Science' Republicans.
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29Meanwhile, consensus candidate easily wins election in Ukraine, with the far-right reduced to 2% of the vote. Guess who lied out of his ass again.
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21First European Parliament elections since eurozone crisis: Group of over 100 proto-fascists and far-left loons now set to disrupt the other 600 members doing any actual work. Countries wilfully prepared to embarrass themselves: France, Denmark, Greece, Austria and surprise, the Brits.
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48Faux News once again wallows in the mire: Shooter acted because he "could not cope with his 'homosexual impulses'.”
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54Here we go again: Six dead in a series of drive-by shootings and stabbings near UC Santa Barbara. (Gunman was the son of a Hollywood director and quoting the usual MRA spiel.) Update: An "incel" site is freaking. Update II: All guns legally purchased and registered. "When will this insanity stop?"
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5The UKIP does scarily well in local council elections. So much so, that some Tories are starting to mutter about a pact with the UKIP in 2015.
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21Police bust a major child porn ring, thanks to the collection of child porn videos, found on an Orthodox rabbi's computer.
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26Reportedly, Fred Phelps was kicked out of the Westboro Baptist Church shortly before his death because he had a change of heart, coming out in favour of LGBT rights. If true, it means anyone can change.
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9Insert 2010: The Year We Make Contact jokes here.
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16Tennessee brings back Ol' Sparky.
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34Republicans vote to prevent the Pentagon from using funding to address the national security impacts of climate change.
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14 Results are coming in on the British local elections. Conservatives are doing badly, Lib Dems doing terribly in comparison to 2010. Meanwhile Labour makes greatest overall gains and UKIP makes greatest proportional gains.
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15You've seen it coming: coup d'etat in Thailand by Chan-ocha's military junta.
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9NBA owner afraid of black guys wearing hoodies.
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17Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.
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30Meet Asa Hutchinson, Republican candidate for the governor of Arkansas. He supports voter ID laws meant to make sure poor people are not allowed to vote. Hutchinson went to vote, only to find he forgot his ID at home, and was not allowed to vote, until he sent a staffer to get his ID for him.
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27UKIP's cunning plan to prove itself totally not racist by flaunting its ethnic minority members falls flat in a disastrous "carnival" event on the streets of Croydon complete with protesters, terrible PR, alienated locals, an unhappy and unpaid band, and a party leader who stayed the hell away from it.
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15Remember when Oklahoma voted to ban Sharia law from their state constitution? Oops.
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14The GOP puts their stooges back in their place. (Zing!)
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18Seems it's not just the Catholic Church that's good at covering up the rape of children...
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25An indie movie adaptation of Jack Chick's anti-roleplaying game comic Dark Dungeons has potential to be awesome.
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26Flooding and landslides in Bosnia-Herzegovina claim many victims in one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes caused by a natural disaster that Europe has faced in decades. Donations can go to the Red Cross to provide such essentials as potable water for those affected.
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22New study out of New Zealand confirms that there is no link between water fluoridation and reduced IQ.
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31The dominoes continue to fall. Pennsylvania judge John E. Jones III (recommended by Santorum!) declares gay marriage prohibition unconstitutional.
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22Prosecutors knowingly sent innocent man to prison for 25 years The victim is African American, is that relevant? Prosecutors are judged for securing convictions, not for securing justice.
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11Yet another coup in Thailand (although they're not calling it that). Also, Martial Law selfies are now a thing.
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18Dinesh D'Souza: Soon-to-be convicted felon. Update: He's a crook!
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17Judges are now striking down a gay marriage ban once a week. Slow down, we're trying to catch up.
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20In some parts of the USA, criminal defendants have to pay for such things as a jury and arrest warrants. That's right, you can bribe have to pay for your jury.
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32Apple is being sued in a class-action lawsuit for holding text messages hostage when a user switches from Apple to another OS.
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37 After a vote for a college president is postponed due to allegations of sexual harassment, MRAs make it a pet cause and offer advice on how to rape drunk women.
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29Bryan College demands faculty affirm that Adam and Eve were real, loses 9 of their 44 professors, students not happy.
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14Southern Baptist Convention: They're here, they're queer, they're in our churches and we may as well just put up with it now
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22A New York City minister has agreed to repay $1.2 million after taking funds raised by the church to benefit 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina victims and spending it on a BMW and a new house for his family.
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21An incident worthy of the "-gate" suffix: A supporter of a Teabagger primary challenge against a (Mississippi GOP) incumbent breaks into the nursing home of the Senator's vegetative wife and shoots video. The cops have the guy's laptop, and the campaign knew what happened before the arrest went public.
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21Thanks to Pamela Geller: DC buses. Now with MOAR HITLER!
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19Concern grows over the rise of Buddhist fundamentalism/
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17African leaders declare war on Boko Haram
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29Mike Adams of NaturalNews is making legal threats against a Forbes blogger, and Forbes itself, for documenting his gibbering lunacy. (Response from Adams, response from original threatened author.) And a Discover Magazine blogger says nice things about RW.
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18It was bound to happen: the Bitcoin Foundation is imploding.
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41Operation American Spring: People turn up in their tens to overthrow the government. (UPDATE: American government remains non-overthrown.)
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21US conservative groups call porn consumption a "major public health crisis".
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10Hindu nationalists win a majority in the largest election in history. (Let's just hope they're not this bad.)
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13With China slapping Vietnam once again, just guess what brilliant idea the Japanese government wants to try.
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20Right-wing cranks plan to march on Washington D.C. this Friday to unseat the President, in "Operation American Spring." Get your popcorn ready!
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17Obama's people were not too happy when he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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17British police lambasted by judges and activists for using spurious arrests and draconian bail conditions to stifle peaceful anti-fracking protests.
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18The 11 years of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's rule in a nutshell.
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6How to get your university noticed: Dean who criticizes an "open and transparent" budget cuts process gets fired, stripped of tenure and banned from campus for life. Update: Backtrack time!
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10Measles Vaccines cure cancer!
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8The FCC just opened up the proposal. Better make sure they won't do something stupid.
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17Ken Ham and Pat Robertson are at each others' throats again. UPDATE: Oh please! Oh please! Oh please!
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19Atheists, humanists and religious allies raise over $900,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Those damn do-gooder atheists.
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12Dmitry "Medvedev" Rogozin: Shutdown the ISS!
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25Teachers at Roman Catholic schools in many parts of the USA must sign a contract promising to toe the Church's line on social and reproductive matters - even away from work.
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15Why the Supreme Court can't be trusted with tech cases.
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24The continuing emergence of the welfare rancher state.
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19United States children are exploited working on tobacco farms.
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28We're on a roll: Idaho's gay marriage ban is gone - and Antonin Scalia is now reduced to a punchline.
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17The FCC gets a taste of its own medicine— a website throttles their Internet to 1994 speed.
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23EU court confirms right to disappear from internet. Totally non-evil data mining business cries censorship.
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36Conspiracy theorist stoops to new low - telling the mother of a Sandy hook victim that her daughter never existed.
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14Ok, the NBA really needs to explain how this guy was tolerated for three decades.
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30West Antarctica glacier melt has "passed the point of no return"
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-9 A lesbian threw chocolates at an exorcist priest's head. The priest knew the devil possessed the woman because he was homophobic due to her characteristic Satanic growl.
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23John Oliver hosts a statistically proportional debate on Global warming featuring Bill Nye. It's more verbal beatdown.
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30Killer. Fucking. Robots.
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32 Bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst wins Eurovision Song Contest. Russia shits itself.
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11"Can someone explain to me why we've had a huge uptick of San Francisco tourists to Missouri over the summer?"
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12Tomorrow's North American headline news.
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43Arkansas' same-sex marriage ban falls. How many states does that make now?
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17Canadian Liberals must now walk the party line on abortion.
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32Texas GOP candidate Dan Patrick: It’s a ‘myth’ that Planned Parenthood does ‘anything’ for women’s health.
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23Relevant to our interests: 8-legged goat born.
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13Thai Supreme Court dismisses Prime Minister; demonstrations and/or riots may ensue.
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14Has he blinked? Putin tells separatists in eastern Ukraine to stop its secession referendum. (NATO's reaction.) Update: And now back to "anything can happen." Hanlon's razor.
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30Evangelicals bone up their ‘raising the dead’ skills
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35Another of the Phelps cult has flown the coop.
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30Louie Gohmert: Constitution only protects Americans who ‘cling to God and guns’.
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22Happy now Jenny?
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31One of the world's worst-kept foreign policy secrets revealed: China is preparing for a potential toppling of Kim Jong-un.
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25The real Crimean referendum numbers accidentally get published: Only 50% voted for annexation out of a 30% turnout. Oops. (google-translation of original Russian page)
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14Ya wanna hang with us? Don't cuss!
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22More pieces being chipped out of the wall between church and state.
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36Tennessee state senator Stacey Campfield compares signing up for Obamacare to Nazi ‘train rides for Jews’
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50Female Texas Judge declares raped teen not a victim, because she wasn't a virgin at the time.
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18LV Metro Police sponsors pro-abstinence "education" event that involves body-bags.
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0Gerry Adams released by the police
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22"When UKIP was under attack/Old Nigel prepared to fight back/We're clearly not racist/He said, on the basis/That some of our people are black."
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3338% of rape victims are men, survey finds
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0NewsCorp buys Harlequin. Yes, that Harlequin. (it's a romance novel publisher, for the 98% of us that didn't automatically know.)
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20Another day, another embarrassingly bonkers UKIP candidate: UKIP candidate who called David Cameron a ‘gay loving nutcase’ suspended. Be warned: the CAPS LOCK is almost as bad as the homophobia. Farage has literally claimed nutpicking: that the media are unfairly persecuting him by accurately reporting what his party's candidates are saying on social media.
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1977-year-old Michigan pastor convicted of rape and sexual abuse of three underage girls. According to a prosecutor there was family pressure and pressure in the church to keep things quiet.
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-2Well, well, well, Jeremy Clarkson.
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38The Satanic Temple's plan for an accompaniment to the Oklahoma Statehouse's Ten Commandments statue is moving right along. Long live the goat!
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19Boulder, Colorado-based youth pastor Jason Roberson pleads guilty to charges of sexual exploitation of children and stalking. Remember this was based on the Injustice System of plea bargaining.
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25Julia Gasper, who when she was with UKIP told gay people they needed to "stop complaining and start thanking straight people" for being born, is now with the even more pointless English Democrats party and reckons there's too many gay people in Parliament, and that organisers of Gay History Month have overstated the persecution of gay people in the Holocaust: "Move over, Anne Frank, we are the real victims." Lovely.
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23Oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the UK has been going for 10,000 years. What price the 6,000 year old earth now?
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12Toronto, May 1: The political equivalent of Revelation. Update: Oh yes, Revelation.