RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/February 2017

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February 2017[edit]

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18Four Mosques Have Burned In Seven Weeks — Leaving Many Muslims and Advocates Stunned.
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16Study shows how information sources affect voters.
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37Donald Trump: "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."
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23Germany to boost army to 200,000 troops amid growing concern over Donald Trump's commitment to Nato.
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23Father of US commando killed in Yemen refused to meet Trump.
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21World Health Organisation says new drugs urgently needed to fight 12 bacteria families.
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18In South Africa, 1054 rhinos were poached in 2016, down from 1175 in 2015 and after a surge from 83 to 1215 between 2008 and 2014.
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38In response to public outrage, the Arizona House kills a bill that would have made it legal to seize the assets of protesters.
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24Literally scores of True American Patriots respond to Trump's call for a mass rally.
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17Palestinians create a new political entity.
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24A French historian who has regularly visited the United States for the past 30 years was threatened with deportation by an "inexperienced" immigration officer, who was looking really hard for a reason to deny entry.
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14An estimated 366 migrants died at sea during their Mediterranean journey to Europe in the first 53 days of 2017, down from 425 of the comparable period of last year.
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16In Germany, preliminary official figures indicate that nearly 10 attacks a day were made on migrants in 2016.
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13It turns out that punching Nazis is a time-honored American tradition.
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17Homework for elementary school children is not linked to better academic performance.
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18Witches are trying to cast spells on Donald Trump and more than one supporter is praying and fasting in an effort to counter the magic.
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24Donald Trump says he will not attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
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19A South African court has ruled the government's plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was "unconstitutional and invalid".
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34Fox News digs itself deeper as it puts a fake Swedish "defense and national security advisor" with a criminal record on air.
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25Family Christian, the "world's largest retailer of Christian-themed merchandise," is going out of business after 85 years.
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24Arizona Senate gives police power to seize assets of protestors
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27A man in Kansas shoots two Indian men in a bar, yelling,"Get out of my country!"
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26An Indian official used $750,000 of public funds to offer gold at a temple to "thank the gods".
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53The Pope says "an atheist is better than a hypocritical Catholic."
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40Astronomers discover that nearby star has seven Earth-sized planets, three of them at least being likely to support liquid water
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39Google delists NaturalNews and its subdomains from its search results. Mike Adams, predictably, loses it.
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14Iraqi & US forces retake Mosul airport.
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11Alan Colmes, Fox News pundit, is dead.
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16Invisible particles washed off from products like synthetic clothing and car tires account for up to a third of pollution by plastic.
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6India is seeing an alarming rise in caesarean section surgeries.
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20And the destruction of the few federal level LGBTQIA protection begins. (Dept. of Ed. Rescinds Obama-era rule on transgender students' bathroom use.)
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49Same-sex marriage policies are associated with reduced adolescent suicide attempts.
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28 Texas is probably going to be the next location for a future outbreak.
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28The Dutch House of Representatives has approved a bill to legalise cultivating marijuana.
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23Famine has been formally declared in parts of South Sudan with 100,000 people facing starvation and a further 1 million people classified as being on the brink of famine.
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64Milo Yiannopoulos dropped from CPAC amid his pedophilia controversy. Edit:Simon & Schuster has pulled their book deal, as well. And he's resigned from Breitbart.
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30Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent was the lowest on a 38-year-old satellite record for the month of January.
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19Malaysia has recalled its North Korean ambassador.
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22The Detroit Free Press published an article on ChurchMilitant.tv.
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19Norma McCorvey, Roe in Roe v. Wade, dies.
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29One million Ukrainian children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
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34Small victory for sanity: Court overturns Florida's law preventing doctors from asking their patients about gun ownership.
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30Should presidents be tested for dementia?
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24Apparently we are in danger because we don't feel threatened, but that can be fixed with a holy war and reliance on 'facts and spiritual conviction' which couldn't possibly have anything to do with conspiracy theories. (sarcasm: fact or fiction? you decide!)
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25The Endangered Species Act may become endangered.
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29The release date for Milo's latest book has been pushed back by 3 months. Seeing a pattern here? His last 2 book projects mysteriously disappeared without trace, and his only published books to date - poetry books - contained substantial amounts of plagiarism.
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21A coastal region in South Africa is about to face water shortages.
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23The Australian financial regulator APRA officially recognizes climate change as a financial risk.
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31Goats can recognize their friends from sight or sound
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19Cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski has been fined and put under severe restrictions by the Texas Medical Board.
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33In Holland, paranoid racist True Hero Geert Wilders is the current frontrunner of the elections, with his party expected to get 20% of the votes. Virtually everyone else has sworn never to work with him, but him getting the largest vote would normalize anti-Euro and xenophobic sentiment throughout Holland, and encourage other ultra-nationalists throughout Europe.
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33France’s Marine Le Pen quietly pledges to end same-sex marriage.
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13U.S. airstrikes on oil trucks in Islamic State-controlled areas employed depleted uranium, which has been accused of causing cancer and birth defects.
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21Trump Labor Nominee Andrew Puzder Withdraws, First Cabinet Pick To Fall
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20Hallucinations are more common than people realize, aren't exclusively symptoms of psychosis, and shouldn't be stigmatized.
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30Kellyanne Conway banned from show "Morning Joe" with the host saying,"I don't believe in fake news."
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16Dementia replaces HIV/AIDS at number 7 position in global list of leading causes of death. (WHO portal and data sheet)
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19Europe is affected by anti-migrant fake news and the German newspaper Bild has apologized for publishing a false report of mass sexual assault based on unreliable claims by 'witnesses'.
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18And now for a tinsy bit of lulz: there is an executive order on how to make executive orders. Trump violated that.
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10After several Republicans balked at supporting his nomination to Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder has withdrawn.
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14In South Sudan, a humanitarian crisis started in 2013 is still deepening, overwhelming aid organizations and putting millions of lives at risk.
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40Dear Kremlin: it's great that you're finally realizing that just because you can support an insane ideologue, doesn't necessarily mean you should.
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20In the ancient city of Palmyra, Daesh militants have destroyed two of Syria's most iconic archaeological monuments.
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23Librarians are protesting Trump's anti-immigration executive orders.
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30Teenaged former member of banned terrorist organisation is ordered to attend counselling after making pipe bomb - This leniency obviously has nothing to do with him being white and far-right.
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29Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has resigned.
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31Coders are volunteering time and scripts to save scientific data from being 'disappeared'.
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13The UN Security Council voiced strong opposition to the latest ballistic missile launch by North Korea.
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22Water pollution is more widespread than previously thought. Scientists have discovered alarmingly high levels of chemical contaminants in the deepest of ocean trenches on Earth.
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10The CIA just gave a medal to a Saudi Prince for his "anti-terror efforts". Despite the irony, this kind of stupidity is to be expected from the CIA.
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22The Intercept: Telecom companies team up with civil rights groups to support Donald Trump's culling of net neutrality.
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22Antisemitic incidents reached a record high in the UK in 2016. Interesting to note: of 236 antisemitic incidents showing clear ideological motivations, 162 showed far-right motivations, while just 12 showed Islamist motivations.
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18W3C is considering standardizing DRM-enabling technology posing potential security, legal and ethical challenges, and possibly redefining how we access the web.
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23Some people just "know" that reality is fake.
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19In India, local temporary Internet shutdowns for "security reasons" have increased in the past 2 years.
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23The National Security Adviser got his hand caught in the cookie jar.
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25Here we go again: Kentucky debating bill that would protect students' religious expression...and allow teachers to use the Bible.
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18Mencius Moldbug denies a report that he has been in secret talks with Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon
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25Trump flips his stance (again?) and backs One China policy in his first call with Xi.
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27Donald Trump 'to approve arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain' blocked by Barack Obama.
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32Trump's executive order for travel ban suffered a major setback on Thursday after a panel of three judges upheld a temporary restraining order issued last Friday to prevent the enforcement.
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21French Intelligence Agency Braces for Russian Bots to Back Le Pen
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23Children being born in the United States today have a near one in two (43%) chance of being born into households living on the brink of poverty.
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25The Guardian: Fact checking AI is having a hard time with Trump because he makes no sense.
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3The Guardian, "Fake news for liberals: misinformation starts to lean left under Trump"
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21Cutting off Internet access (to prevent "spreading false news") is becoming routinely used as an oppression tool in some African countries like Cameroon.
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35Wikipedia bans Daily Mail as 'unreliable' source. Rationalwiki was light-years ahead!
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21Elizabeth Warren is prohibited from reading a Coretta Scott King letter denouncing Jeff Sessions. Her supporters protest on social media.
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24ISIS calls Trump's travel ban "the blessed ban".
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17Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced bills to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education.
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27Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz discussed their diametrically opposing viewpoints on healthcare on live television. However, they agree to go after the pharmaceutical industry.
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21Syria conflict: As many as 13000 people hanged by Assad regime at Saydnaya prison, Amnesty says. Witness reports that the victims were condemned to death in a two- to three-minute hearing.
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26Trump more or less singlehandedly saves an entire failing American industry, the mainstream media
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18For the second time in less than 2 months, India's Supreme Court authorizes an abortion at 24 weeks for medical reasons (there is a plan to extend the current legal limit of 20 weeks to 24).
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-12Most Europeans want immigration ban from Muslim-majority countries, poll reveals. A ban was supported by 71 per cent of people in Poland, 65 per cent in Austria, 53 per cent in Germany and 51 per cent in Italy.
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-22Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Education Secretary only after a tie-breaking vote from Mike Pence.
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-41In an effort to tackle the spread of HIV and AIDS, the Chinese government is growing support for home remedies.
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34A UKIP MEP has been ordered to pay a total of £196,000 to three Labour MPs after being taken to court for accusing them of being complicit in a campaign of child sexual abuse by taxi drivers in South Yorkshire.
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46Russian Academy of Science issued memorandum that calls Homeopathy a pseudoscience. UPD: Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (which has to combat false advertising) supports this point of view. UPD2: Russian Ministry of Health considers ban on homeopathic remedies.
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46A federal judge in Seattle said he would temporarily block enforcement of the President's ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries entering the United States.
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15Citing its recent missile test and its support for rebels in Yemen, the US imposed new sanctions on Iran. President Trump said he would not be as "kind" on Iran as Obama was.
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35Betsy DeVos faces serious opposition from the American public as the new Secretary of Education.
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13The US economy added about 227,000 new jobs in January. However, wages on average are increasing very slowly.
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-24DAESH claims responsibility for a machete attack on a group of four soldiers at the Louvre. The attacker, posing as an Egyptian tourist from Dubai, was injured and detained. One soldier was injured.
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22 The Trump administration will cut white supremacists from counter-terrorism programme.
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20Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, has stood down from his role as an economic advisor to Trump due to fears that an immigration ban could damage the taxi industry, as well as the recent #DeleteUber backlash .
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35Protests erupting at UC Berkeley over Milo Yiannopoulos's plan to speak there. The event has been canceled.
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48A leaked draft shows Trump's forthcoming "Executive Order to Respect Religious Freedom" will allow widespread discrimination in services, employment, education and healthcare against same-sex couples, LGBT people, women who have or need an abortion, and even people practicing premarital sex. In other words, Trump wants to shove Christian sex ethics down Americans' throats.