The toll of deaths in Sri Lanka has risen to 321 with more than 500 injured. CCTV video has emerged showing a suspect walking into one of the churches in Sri Lanka just prior to the explosion.
A slightly longer video showing the suspect patting a child on the head on his way to the church can be seen here.
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According to the deal that the IRS has with the private tax preparation companies, the IRS will not develop its own free software provided that the companies offer free software to people earning less than $66,000 per year. Congress is now about to pass a measure making that agreement an actual law. But Justin Elliot and Lucas Waldron at ProPublica tried to file free and found that TurboTax has made it incredibly difficult for people to even locate the free service.
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A church is offering a ‘miracle cure’ that consists of drinking a solution containing bleach.
A group calling itself Genesis II Church of Health and Healing plans to convene at a hotel resort in Washington state on Saturday to promote a “miracle cure” that claims to cure 95% of all diseases in the world by making adults and children, including infants, drink industrial bleach.
…The “church” is asking attendants of the meeting to “donate” $450 each, or $800 per couple, in exchange for receiving membership to the organization as well as packages of the bleach, which they call “sacraments”. The chemical is referred to as MMS, or “miracle mineral solution or supplement”, and participants are promised they will acquire “the knowledge to help heal many people of this world’s terrible diseases”.
Some of you may remember my post from last year about David and Louise Turpin, the parents of 13 children who were found to be malnourished and shackled and beaten inside the home in which the parents ‘home-schooled’ their children. The children were so malnourished that they seemed much younger than their years and their knowledge of the world was highly deficient. It was all part of their ‘Christian upbringing’ because the Turpins were considered a ‘good Christian family’. It is a horrifying and tragic story of the absurd levels of discretion given to parents of children in the US under the umbrella of religious freedom, to determine how their children are brought up. This article describes the laws that enable this kind of abuse to exist.
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The former president said that this was true not just for the current time but in the history of the world and backed up his assertion with facts.
Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”
Carter then said the US has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation. Counting wars, military attacks and military occupations, there have actually only been five years of peace in US history—1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford administration and 1977-80, the entirety of Carter’s presidency. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”
I have been trying to keep abreast of the bombings in Sri Lanka that have led to global condemnation. There are reports of a armed stand-off at an apartment building where three police officers were killed. The government has reportedly made some arrests but they are not revealing the names of those taken into custody and have urged the media not to do so either. This is likely because in Sri Lanka one’s name is an almost certain indictor of one’s linguistic/ethnic group and they likely fear that there will be vigilante retaliation against innocent members of that community. One should also be wary of any early reports. Sri Lankan police tend to depend upon the ’round up the usual suspects and see if they confess’ method of investigation, not the best way of getting reliable information.
State Minister/ Defence @RWijewardene urges media not to publicise names of today's attackers. He warned other extremist groups could exploit situation & create tension between communities. "Don't give extremists a voice. Don't help to make them martyrs" #EasterSundayAttacksLK
— dharisha (@tingilye) April 21, 2019
I was woken up this morning by a phone call from my daughter alerting me to the horrific news from Sri Lanka where a coordinated set of eight attacks at multiple locations, reportedly involving suicide bombings, had claimed over 200 lives and 450 injured though those numbers will change. The government has ordered a nationwide curfew and shut down all social media platforms, a source of many incendiary rumors in the past. Sri Lanka is prone to fact-free speculations spreading like wildfire even before the age of social media and these platforms have made this problem much worse
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Cleveland is my hometown but I am not the best person to tell visitors what to do and see while here since I am not a particularly touristy kind of person. So I was grateful for this review of the city by William O’Connor that points out some of the places worth seeing, most of which I have not been to.
I have not seen this film or even heard about it but after watching this hilarious review of it by the comedian, I don’t think I need to. Like most natural disaster films, there is an attempt to give a scientific explanation for the catastrophe but O’Briain says that this ludicrously over-the-top apocalyptic film offered one that was so utterly outlandish that he used it to insert a useful lesson about neutrinos.