Eternity News Now

The European Union has announced a new funding package of 42.5 million euros (nearly $53m) to help the Palestinians build their new state. 
The announcement on Wednesday came as Brussels urged the US to not go it alone in any effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The EU  warned that doing so would end in failure. Read more.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald—whose short tenure has already been mired in conflicts of interest—resigned Wednesday after a report revealed she bought stock in a major tobacco company and others that were potential conflicts while directing the public health agency that leads the federal government's efforts to reduce tobacco use.  Read more.

Last Spring, in a highly publicized meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, President Donald Trump received some startling news. One of the members mentioned to Trump that pushing forward with "welfare reform" would be hurtful to her constituents, "not all of whom are black."  Read more.

The United States has designated Ismail Haniya, the senior political leader of Hamas, as a "global terrorist". 
The US State Department issued a press release on Wednesday saying that Haniya "has close links with Hamas' military wing" and "has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians".  Read more.

The FBI said on Wednesday it had “grave concerns” about the accuracy of a top-secret House Intelligence Committee memo alleging anti-Trump bias within the Justice Department, challenging President Donald Trump’s pledge to release it.  Read more.

Struggling retailer Sears Holding Corp (SHLD.O) said it laid off about 220 employees primarily at its corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, effective immediately.  Read more.

Once upon a time American presidents saw one nation...undivided...believing in beauty and abundance...believing in community and shared opportunity.  President Johnson had such a vision, which he led this nation to aspire to. 

Johnson called it the "Great Society." 

A year before he signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which gave African-Americans the right to vote, and as such, full citizenship, Johnson gave one of his "Great Society" speeches in 1964.  Saying that:

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use [our] wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society an…

Just as U.S. President Donald Trump was preparing to lambast North Korea as "a menace that threatens our world" in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Pyongyang attempted to undercut Trump's "ominous" rhetoric by releasing a white paper that highlights America's "gross" human rights violations and deep inequities, from its failure to "embrace paid maternity leave" to its exorbitant healthcare costs.  Read more.

Despite protests from conservationists, local tribe leaders, Democratic lawmakers, and even the United Nations' expert on indigenous rights, at 6am on Friday the Trump administration will allow citizens and companies to start staking claims on sections of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah so the new stakeholders can conduct hard rock mining on the formerly protected lands.  Read more.

The government of British Columbia has proposed new regulations restricting the transportation of oil through the Western Canadian province in what is expected to be a major setback for a planned pipeline expansion project.  Read more.

Journalism lost one of its most valuable investigators when Robert Parry died from pancreatic cancer on January 27, at the age of  68. He was the first reporter to reveal Oliver North’s operation in the White House basement (AP, 6/10/1985), and the co-author of the first report on Contra drug-smuggling (AP, 12/21/1985). He did some of the most important work investigating the 1980 Reagan campaign’s efforts to delay the return of US hostages held in Iran, a scandal known as the October Surprise.  Read more.

It is with a heavy heart that we inform Consortiumnews readers that Editor Robert Parry has passed away. As regular readers know, Robert (or Bob, as he was known to friends and family) suffered a stroke in December, which – despite his own speculation that it may have been brought on by the stress of covering Washington politics – was the result of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer that he had been unknowingly living with for the past 4-5 years.  Read more.

It was back in November, on Armistice Day in France, the day on which the end of World War I is celebrated, when Vésuve de Brekka trotted up the Champs-Élysées in a steady rain with French President Emmanuel Macron. Not quite two months later, he then accompanied Macron to Beijing, where the nine-year-old gelding ended up in a paddock in a Beijing suburb -- quarantined in conformance with the regulations. Read more.

While most Australians fire up the barbecue and crack open beers to celebrate national day on Friday, Robbie Thorpe will be marching in the shadow of Victoria's state parliament.
Like many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, he doesn't see anything to cheer on Australia Day, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet in 1778 to establish a British penal colony.  Read more.

President Donald Trump’s first non-Fox television interview in a long time, conducted with CNBC’s Joe Kernen from Davos, Switzerland, is in many respects weirdly devoid of substance. And much of the substance that’s there consists of misstatements of fact.
But lurking in that is an important insight: Trump is holding the office of president, but he’s not doing the job of president.  Read more.

This week Amena Khan became the latest woman of colour to be silenced in public. Just days after it was announced that Khan - a hijab-wearing Muslim beauty blogger -  was to join French cosmetics company L'Oreal's "diversity-celebrating" haircare campaign, she was forced to pull out. Her decision followed a right-wing witch-hunt against her over past tweets condemning Israel's actions during the war on Gaza in 2014.  Read more.

The gathering of global political and industrial leaders in Davos each year leads many observers to wonder: Who benefits in the long term from economic growth and corporate profits? Society as a whole or just a select few at the very top? One way to approach that question is by looking at how the entire wealth of a given society is distributed among individual members of that society.  Read more.

Anti-immigrant and populist incumbent Czech President Milos Zeman has won a second five-year term in a runoff election, beating his centre-left pro-EU rival Jiri Drahos in a close race.  Read more.

The tourism industry is blaming President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies and xenophobic rhetoric for a decline in foreign visitors to the U.S. since Trump took office a year ago.
The National Travel and Tourism Office saw a nearly four percent drop in foreign travelers entering the U.S. in 2017 and more than a three percent drop in spending by tourists.  Read more.

A special prosecutor will investigate Michigan State University "from the president's office down" over how former MSU sports physician Larry Nassar could have sexually abused girls and young women for nearly 20 years without university action, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said Saturday.  Read more.

Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn resigned as finance chairman of the Republican Party’s fundraising arm on Saturday, a day after a newspaper reported that he routinely subjected women who worked for him to unwanted sexual advances.  Read more.

At least 95 people have been killed and 158 were wounded in a powerful suicide blast in the Afghan capital, Kabul.  Read more.

Earlier this month, with almost no international news coverage and with the majority of Barbudans still displaced from the storm, an amendment to the law in question was quietly pushed through the Senate of Antigua and Barbuda — a body dominated by politicians from the wealthier and more populous island of Antigua. If the amendment stands, a tradition of communal land rights that dates back to the abolition of slavery in 1834 — and which has protected Barbuda as a rare beacon of sustainable development in the Caribbean — will be extinguished.  Read more.

Nearly 17 years after 9/11 and one year into Donald Trump's presidency, dozens of detainees remain held in the United States' penal colony at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Obama's failure to close the US prison at Guantánamo and hold torturers accountable has made it easier for Trump to openly embrace torture and keep the facility open. Now, a year into the Trump administration, the Guantánamo military commissions system remains a kangaroo court and the US government maintains an abusive system of indefinite detention while waging perpetual war. These policies are more normalized than they've been before.  Read more.

The greatest impact of Donald Trump’s first year as president has been kept out of sight from most Americans. The wars the U.S. waged during Barack Obama’s tenure have sharply escalated under Trump. The result has been a predictable and massive spike in civilian deaths.  Read more.

This month, the Israeli government announced that activists affiliated with 20 organizations, including my organization CODEPINK, would be banned from entering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories because of our support for the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.  Read more.

You often seem terrified of alienating voters who do not embrace you, while discounting those — such as immigrants, African Americans, LGBTQ and, yes, progressive whites — who do.  Read more.

Dozens of Holocaust survivors sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday imploring him not to go ahead with his plan to deport African asylum seekers from Israel.  Read more.

In response to a recent move by the Republican-controlled FCC to roll back net neutrality, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order on Wednesday to make New York the second state this week to ensure the consumer protections.
Paired with action taken by Montana on Monday, the orders to preserve net neutrality are being celebrated by free speech and consumer protection advocates, who have mounted a national movement against the...read more.

Widely popular former president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva has been banned from running in elections this year after an appeals court upheld corruption-related convictions.  Read more.

New York City is suing eight companies that make or distribute prescription opioids for their role in the ongoing opioid crisis. The suits aim to recover $500 million for current and future costs combating the epidemic.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said opioids killed more people in the city in recent years than car crashes and homicides.  Read more.

A leading politician from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has converted to Islam and resigned from his position with the anti-Muslim party, the party has confirmed.
Arthur Wagner, a leading member of the far-right party in...read more.

Sgt. Wayne Jenkins was driving his squad’s car the wrong way down a one way street—as he often did—when he saw Oreese Stevenson, walking with a backpack. Jenkins slammed on the breaks. This encounter on March 16, 2016 would begin a long saga that illustrates the determined, almost obsessive, corruption in the...read more.

Each day, we can see new evidence that the economy fails to serve people or planet.  Read more.

The Trump administration’s decision to drastically slash American contributions to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) has sent shockwaves through the organization and left millions of Palestinian refugees wondering if the basic ingredients for their survival will soon disappear. “This is the worst financial crisis in UNRWA’s history,” Chris Gunness told the...read more.

Oprah Winfrey's remarkable Golden Globes speech rocked not only the event's A-list attendees, but almost all of America.
Winfrey cited the under-told story of Recy Taylor, a young black woman who was raped by six armed white men during the Jim Crow era. Despite threats to her life, Taylor reported her story to the...read more.

Pennsylvania’s top court on Monday threw out the state’s congressional map, ruling that Republican legislators unlawfully sought partisan advantage, and gave them three weeks to rework it in a decision that could boost Democratic chances of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives.  Read more.

A 15-year-old boy opened fire with a handgun in his high school in western Kentucky on Tuesday, killing two fellow students and wounding a dozen other youths before being arrested, the state’s governor and police said.  Read more.

When José Rivera moved into his house, he thought he was on the path to home ownership. But after several years and more than $90,000 in rent, he can't even get his landlord to fix the broken pipe that leaked raw sewage into his home.  Read more.

In an age when the current White House occupant has inspired unprecedented levels of armchair psychiatry, Allen Frances remains one of the foremost authorities in the field. As the chair of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV Task Force, he helped draft the criteria defining narcissistic personality disorder and other mental illnesses.  Read more.

America has never had a president as deeply unpopular at this stage of his presidency, or one who has sucked up more political oxygen. This isn’t good news for the Republican Party this November or in the future, because the GOP has sold its soul to Trump.
Three principles once gave the GOP its identity and mission: Shrink the deficit, defend states’ rights, and be tough on Russia.  Read more.

The Big Three banks -- JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America -- raked in an astonishing $6.4 billion in overdraft fees alone last year. Stop a moment and think about that: Each overdraft, on average, costs customers $35, an amount that gets multiplied with each subsequent purchase no matter how small.  Read more.

Indefinite imprisonment or a one-way ticket.
These were the options Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to African refugees and migrants in Israel earlier in January.
Describing the 40,000-strong community as "infiltrators", Netanyahu said....read more.

Critics of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) slammed him for caving to Republicans after he announced Monday that the necessary number of Democrats would support a three-week spending bill to end the #TrumpShutdown without first reaching an agreement to protect undocumented youth known as Dreamers.  Read more.

The Statue of Liberty will reopen on Monday even if the U.S. government shutdown extends into the work week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday, vowing to use state funds to keep the landmark monument in operation.  Read more.

A bus crash in central Turkey has left 11 people dead and at least 44 others injured, according to authorities.
The accident on Saturday happened when the vehicle hit...read more.

America's largest janitorial company, ABM Industries Inc., faces new allegations that it ignores sexual abuse in the workplace, years after it agreed in numerous legal settlements to change how it handles such cases.  Read more.

"Never tell anyone," my mother hissed, "that we're on welfare!" I sputtered, "Okay." She let go, angrily. People shuffled to the window where a tired man scanned their papers. That was 1982. Passing a poster of President Reagan, she shot him the middle finger. Later I realized, he rose to power by branding women like her "welfare queens."  Read more.

A minor girl's rape and murder earlier this month has sent a shock wave across Pakistan. The incident has drawn a wide public outcry, with many celebrities openly talking against child sexual abuse in the South Asian nation.  Read more.

The US government will submit a motion to dismiss indictments for 129 of the 188 remaining Inauguration Day defendants, leaving 59 facing felony charges that could land them behind bars for decades.  Read more.

Last November, an American military inspection team visited the Azov Battalion on the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war to discuss logistics and deepening cooperation. Images of the encounter showed American army officers poring over maps with their Ukrainian counterparts, palling around and ignoring the Nazi-inspired Wolfangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves.  Read more.

Thousands of protesters turned out across the nation for the second Women’s March on Saturday, marking the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration with rallies aimed at channeling female activism into political gains in elections this year.  Read more.

Every child in the US has the right to a quality education, and the American public school system has been responsible for ensuring that occurs -- regardless of a child's location or income level. But the public school system has been slowly starved of money, teachers and even infrastructure itself...read more.

At a press briefing Wednesday morning, Mayor Catherine Pugh announced The Baltimore City Community Grants Program. The partnership between the Mayor’s office and The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation will provide up to $10,000 to nonprofits with...read more.

The public relations spin doctors are working overtime at Apple this week.

The tech giant just announced that it will pay $38 billion to the U.S. Treasury in taxes brought home from overseas—and “create” some...read more.

The U.S. Senate was short of the votes needed to approve a bill to keep the federal government running as a midnight deadline loomed on Friday night, although high-level negotiations continued.  Read more.

The police killing of a man in Karachi has sparked a social media outcry, as his family members reject claims by authorities that he was a member of the Pakistan Taliban, saying he was an innocent aspiring male model.  Read more.

A teenage boy has been shot and killed by police after a juvenile hearing at an Ohio court during an altercation, local officials said.

Joseph Haynes, 16, was appearing for a hearing about a firearms charge against him at the Franklin County court in Columbus on Wednesday when a...read more.

They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return.
A new wave of African Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States.  Read more.

Belgium has pledged to donate 19m euro ($23m) to UNRWA, the UN's aid organisation for Palestinian refugees, after the US government announced it would slash its funding to the agency by half.  Read more.

Nearly all members of the National Park Service advisory panel abruptly quit on Monday in protest of the Trump administration's policies, which they say have neglected science, climate change and environmental protections.  Read more.

Getting books behind bars is no easy task. Correctional systems across the country have strict rules about which books prisoners can read and how they must be shipped -- and these rules are constantly changing.  Read more.

At least three people were killed and several others injured in the Netherlands due to a severe storm, as gusts of up to 140 kilometres per hour blew down trees and damaged buildings.
The three fatalities occurred in separate incidents in the centre of the Netherlands, where...read more.

Iran's supreme leader has said Saudi Arabia's alignment with the United States and Israel is "certainly a betrayal" of the Muslims.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the remark at a conference attended by parliamentary representatives from...read more.

North and South Korea have agreed to form their first-ever joint Olympics team and march together under a "unification flag" at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Games next month.  Read more.

In Nepal's far western Achham, a remote arid region where farming villages dot the foothills of the Himalayas, government and aid workers have walked from door-to-door for nearly a decade to advocate against chauupadi, an ancient Hindu ritual where women are banished from their homes during menstruation.  Read more.

So the Donald wishes more Norwegians would emigrate to America, instead of people from supposed “sh*thole” countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America.
I happen to have spent two weeks visiting beautiful, democratic socialist Norway last summer. And I’ve got news for the Donald. Norwegians are not exactly lining up to...read more.

On the night before Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, he invoked a lesson from biblical Egypt in a speech that is often called “Promised Land.” Pharaoh’s favorite formula for perpetuating slavery, he reminded us, was to keep the slaves fighting among themselves, for joined together they were too strong to subdue.  Read more.

As elected official after elected official spoke in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Day in Harlem Monday, there was a common target of derision: President Trump.
City and state officials ripped Trump as they honored King at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s headquarters — blasting the President for labeling Haiti and African nations “s---holes,” and calling him...read more.

Inmates of Florida’s prisons are planning to use Monday’s Martin Luther King Day holiday to launch a statewide strike over conditions they say amount to modern-day slavery.
The unusual protest has been called by inmates angry at being used as unpaid clean-up crews for storm debris in sweltering temperatures last September, after Hurricane Irma struck the state.
But organisers cite a number of other longstanding grievances for the planned month-long action, in which prisoners will refuse to take part in work assignments and forego purchasing...read more.

While King did care about black and/or poor people in the United States and around the world, he was no American exceptionalist. “Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world,” King once said.
He also criticized how Americans “have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice” when “the fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, here and abroad”.  Read more.

Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer of the Irish rock band the Cranberries, has died in London. She was 46.
Her death was announced by her publicist, who did not specify the cause.  Read more.

Inmates in Florida's prisons launched a month-long strike on Monday in protest of the state's use of "modern day slavery" within its correctional facilities.
In a statement released by the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, one of several advocacy groups supporting the movement, the state's prisoners urged the prison population to refuse all work assignments during the strike:  Read more.

On Monday, the US celebrates the life and legacy of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, who would have turned 89 years old.
The Baptist minister, Nobel Laureate and civil rights activist dedicated his life to "work for peace, social justice, and opportunity for all Americans".  Read more.

Several thousand people marched through the main street of the Tunisian capital on Sunday, marking the seventh anniversary of the toppling of the country's former president after mass protests.  Read more.

Mahmoud Abbas has sharply criticised Donald Trump, saying the Palestinian Authority (PA) will never accept the US president's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.  Read more.

Described as a horrifying depiction of "the reality of U.S. for-profit healthcare," a Baltimore-based psychotherapist this week caught on video University of Maryland Medical Center staff "dumping" a clearly incapacitated young woman into the freezing Maryland weather wearing only a thin hospital gown and socks.  Read more.

The Guatemala attorney general’s office confirmed on Saturday the arrest of congressman Julio Juarez Ramirez, who is accused of plotting the murders of two journalists in 2015.  Read more.

Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data, is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Maryland, according to Federal election filings seen on Saturday.  Read more.

An emergency alert was sent mistakenly on Saturday to Hawaii’s residents warning of an imminent ballistic missile attack when an employee at the state emergency management agency pushed the “wrong button,” Hawaii’s governor said.  Read more.

It takes a level of pomposity inconceivable to most of us to describe another country as a “shithole.”
It’s unfortunately just one more of the obnoxious, racist, and altogether absurd statements we’ve come to expect from President Donald Trump. If the president were to venture beyond the manicured lawns of Mar-a-Lago or the White House, he might see that the U.S. is not exactly in a position to judge...read more.

Trump announced last week that he would attend the WEF in Davos, an annual meeting of global business and political leaders.
Some have suggested that Trump’s polarizing persona could resurrect the violent anti-WEF protests seen in the...read more.

Ecuador has granted citizenship to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in its London embassy for more than five years.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador's foreign minister, told reporters on Thursday that...read more.

The African group of ambassadors to the United Nations has demanded an apology from Donald Trump, after the US president reportedly aimed a racist remark at some Caribbean nations and Africa. Read more.

Denouncing Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as "shitholes" – while pleading for more immigrants from Scandinavia – Donald Trump did more than reveal personal racism. He made plain that U.S. immigration policy is now being driven by animus toward black and brown people.  Read more.

The president’s question was this: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
Technically — in its own crass way — it was a policy question. Specifically, President Trump was asking why the U.S. should accept immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African nations instead of immigrants from wealthy Norway, according to reports of the president's remarks to congressional lawmakers at a Thursday meeting.  Read more.

Leaders from around the world expressed disgust and outrage as news spread on Friday that President Donald Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, and African countries as "shitholes."
Botswana's government released a statement questioning the president's apparent pivot away from—or lack of awareness of the...read more.

Two Palestinian teenagers were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers on Thursday as violence continues in the occupied territories.  Read more.

In a ruling hailed as a major and historic "victory for democracy," a federal court on Tuesday deemed North Carolina's 2016 congressional map unconstitutional on the grounds that it was drawn to discriminate against Democratic voters -- marking the first time a federal court has struck down a redistricting plan for partisan gerrymandering.  Read more.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has struck near the coast of Honduras, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which said it was registered at 20:50 local time.  Read more.

Climate advocates hailed what they say is a "watershed" moment on Wednesday following two announcements by New York City: that the city would seek to divest its pension funds from fossil fuels within five years, and that it filed suit against five fossil fuel giants for their role in driving the climate crisis.  Read more.

Hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer has launched himself into the Trump Resistance, pouring millions of dollars into advertisements and a website urging the impeachment of Donald Trump. He’s spent over $20 million so far on a nationwide ad campaign, starring himself, as the DNC and several grassroots organizations struggle to compete in fundraising against the billionaires backing Trump and the Republican Party.  Read more.

American kids are 70 percent more likely to die during childhood compared with children in other wealthy, democratic nations, according to a peer-reviewed study published Monday by Health Affairs.  Read more.

Imagine a rural oasis of sustainable agriculture and community. There are aquaponic ponds filled with fish, fields lined with vegetable rows, pastures for farm animals, and hives buzzing with bees. There are dormitories for staff, a community kitchen for culinary classes, and even a climbing wall for energetic kids. Now picture all of this at the site of a former jail in Wagram, North Carolina -- the fish swimming in tanks in old jail cells, the cows contained by old prison fence lines, and the climbing wall converted from a guard tower. That's the vision put forth by...read more.

Civil rights advocates denounced New Jersey's prison system on Monday after learning that the book The New Jim Crow, about race and mass incarceration in the U.S., has been banned from some of the state's prisons.  Read more.