Almost 200 Ryanair flights across Europe won’t take off as Ryanair staff in six European countries strike. The decision of the Cockpit pilots’ union to join the strike will cancel 35-45 flights in and out of Germany.
Ryanair staff strike in six EU countries Deutsche Welle
The two-year residential rehab program near Asheville caters to poor and desperate people struggling with addiction. To pay for their stay, participants must work full-time jobs and surrender their pay. Participants were often sent by courts and probation officers as a condition of their probation. Former participants told Reveal they received little addiction help, instead toiling for long hours at care homes and a chain of Zaxby’s restaurants across North Carolina.
Drug rehab patients demand back wages after being sent to work for free Reveal News
A funny thing happened on the way to a world of cryptocurrencies and mobile payments. Cash became more popular than ever. The main reason? The one hundred dollar bill.
In 2017, for the first time ever, the one hundred dollar bill became the most popular US bill in circulation, beating out the one dollar bill. It is quite the turn of events for Benjamin Franklin-faced banknote. Just 10 years ago, it was less common than both the $20 and the $1.
The share of US dollars in circulation as a share of GDP rose from about 6% in 2010 to 9% in 2018, according to the Federal Reserve. Increased use of $100 bills has been the primary driver.
Why are hundreds so much more common these days? It’s not because more people are using them for day-to-day spending. The vast majority of cash transactions are still made in small bills.
There are now more $100 bills than $1 bills in the world Quartz
The US Embassy to Tbilisi transports frozen human blood and pathogens as diplomatic cargo for a secret US military program. Internal documents, implicating US diplomats in the transportation of and experimenting on pathogens under diplomatic cover were leaked to me by Georgian insiders. According to these documents, Pentagon scientists have been deployed to the Republic of Georgia and have been given diplomatic immunity to research deadly diseases and biting insects at the Lugar Center – the Pentagon biolaboratory in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.
‘Diplomatic Immunity’ Used to Traffick Human Blood and Pathogens for Secret Military Program 21st Century Wire
Next to speak to the enthusiastic crowd was President Nicolás Maduro. “I came to New York, to the United Nations, to bring the truth of the Venezuelan people. I also wanted to return to this historic church in Harlem and reiterate our love and commitment, and share this moment with our brother Miguel Díaz-Canel and the people of Cuba,” he stated.
“We have been victims of immense imperialist aggression, but today I can say that the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela is still standing, alive and victorious,” Maduro concluded, to huge applause.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel began his speech by reiterating the fraternal relations and common struggle of Cuba and Venezuela. “Today at the United Nations, two sister peoples raised their voices. Venezuela denounced all the aggression to which it has been subjected and also ratified its decision to continue the Bolivian revolution, as a legacy faithful to Comandante Chávez,” he noted.
“Cuba also raised its voice with Venezuela, to support Venezuela, to support Nicaragua, to support Puerto Rio, to support Latin America, to support the Palestinian and Saharawi people, and to support all the just causes of the world. And also to denounce, once again, the unjust blockade that, for almost 60 years, the United States has imposed on us,” he continued.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to encourage a military coup in Venezuela, saying the “horrible” socialist government represented a threat to its own citizens.
Trump seems to encourage Venezuela military coup amid fresh sanctions Miami Herald
In a strategy aimed at forcing the Taliban to accept peace talks, air raids in Afghanistan spiked steeply this year with the number of bombs dropped by the US air force almost doubling in the first six months to nearly 3,000.
UNAMA’s data shows a jump of 52 percent in the number of civilians killed or wounded in air attacks in the first half of the year.
The UN said 149 civilians were killed and 204 wounded during the period, with women and children comprising more than half the 353 casualties.
Since the figures were reported in July, the UN said it had recorded increasing numbers of civilian casualties from air strikes.
The Afghan air force was responsible for 52 percent of the casualties, UNAMA said, while “international military forces” accounted for 45 percent.
The US, which has been at war in Afghanistan for nearly 17 years, is the only international force known to conduct air raids in the country.
UN: ‘Credible’ reports of Afghan civilians killed in air strike Aljazeera
In a major snub to the United States, the European Union has decided to set up a new mechanism to enable legal trade with Iran without encountering US sanctions.
The EU will create new payment channels to preserve oil and other business deals with Iran, Federica Mogherini, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said late on Monday, in a bid to evade US punitive measures.
US President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal in May and re-imposed sanctions on the country.
Mogherini’s announcement came after a meeting with foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
EU and Iran agree on new payment system to skirt US sanctions Aljazeera
Amazon, the country’s second-largest employer, has so far remained immune to any attempts by U.S. workers to form a union. With rumblings of employee organization at Whole Foods—which Amazon bought for $13.7 billion last year—a 45-minute union-busting training video produced by the company was sent to Team Leaders of the grocery chain last week, according to sources with knowledge of the store’s activities.
Amazon’s Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics Revealed in Leaked 45-Minute Video Gizmodo
Freddie Oversteegen was only 14, petite with long braids, when she became an assassin and saboteur.
It was 1940, Germany had invaded the Netherlands, and she and her sister, Truus, who was two years older, had been recruited by the local Dutch resistance commander, in the city of Haarlem.
“Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: Sabotage bridges and railway lines,” Truus Menger-Oversteegen recalled in a 2014 book, “Under Fire: Women and World War II.” “We told him we’d like to do that.”
Then the commander added, “ ‘And learn to shoot — to shoot Nazis,’ ” she said.
“I remember my sister saying, ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never done before!’ ”
Freddie Oversteegen, Gritty Dutch Resistance Fighter, Dies at 92 NY Times
The Old Mole 