A nine year-old who called a classmate a name and two secondary school girls who said another pupil smelt “like fish” are among thousands of people being investigated by police. These cases are among a [...] The post UK Police Investigate Kids As Young As Nine For Name Calling appeared first on The People's Voice.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei may be about to announce his country’s departure from the Paris climate agreement after meeting with Donald Trump Last week negotiators from Milei’s government were told to leave the Cop29 climate [...] The post Argentina’s President May Be About To Quit Paris Climate Accord appeared first on The People's Voice.

Two Democratic senators are demanding that Elon Musk is investigated over media claims that he communicated with several senior Russian officials in recent years. On Friday Jack Reed, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services [...] The post Democrats Demand Elon Musk Is Investigated Over Russia Ties appeared first on The People's Voice.

Is fencing better than karate? Was the world about to end? How many frozen daiquiries can you have and still pull off an epic solo? Maiden were answering all the important questions when they made Powerslave

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President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort to trim the fat under which the federal government labors — namely, a sprawling bureaucracy and runaway government spending. Musk spawned the idea for the department and offered to head it up during an X space with President-elect Donald Trump back in August. On Tuesday, Trump made DOGE official, saying in a statement that it will “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies” and give government an “entrepreneurial approach.” “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said. The new department has already sparked endless memes — the DOGE acronym is a nod to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Musk is a fan, and briefly changed X’s logo to the coin’s dog meme last year. Another meme making the rounds shows Musk and Ramaswamy as the downsizing consultants from the movie “Office Space,” who famously ask an employee, “What would you say you do here?” Bureaucrats beware ? pic.twitter.com/zfSRjttv2s — Fight With Memes (@fightwithmemes) November 13, 2024 Despite its name, DOGE will actually function as a commission outside the government that will work with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to advise the president on what government bloat can be cut. DOGE will operate on a deadline. It will finish its work by July 4, 2026, the nation’s 250th birthday, Trump said. Musk is ready to go. Since Tuesday’s announcement, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO has been excitedly posting about how he will approach slashing federal waste, but he is also promising to be “very open and transparent” about what DOGE does. One of his main targets: regulation. “The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more,” Musk posted Wednesday. “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.” Read More: Transgender Monkeys And Barbie Fraud: Here’s Some Of The Government Waste DOGE Could Target He wants a broad review of regulations to determine “which ones are sensible and which ones are not.” Musk has personally experienced crippling regulation while trying to launch SpaceX rockets. In October, he sued California regulators and accused them of “shamelessly breaking the law” after they cited his political views in their decision to reject more rocket launches. He also wants to shutter hundreds of the more than 400 federal departments. During an interview last month, Musk pointed out that the United States creates more than one federal agency a year on average. “That seems a lot. That seems crazy. I think we should be able to get away with 99 agencies,” Musk said. Elon Musk explains the importance of creating the Department of Government Efficiency. "There are around 428 federal agencies. There's so many that people have never even heard of. I think we should be able to get away with 99 agencies." pic.twitter.com/QIdTmHWQLj — DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) November 13, 2024 ELON ON D.O.G.E. “We're going to make the spending lower. And if somebody's got a better idea for how to make the spending lower, tell us. But if we don't, we're going to bankrupt the country.” pic.twitter.com/FxCLE5t8RX — America (@america) November 13, 2024 Lowering spending is Musk’s other big objective. “We’re going to make the spending lower, and if somebody’s got a better idea for how to make the spending lower tell us, but if we don’t we’re going to bankrupt the country, and so we’ve got to do something, and it’s got to be some pretty big moves,” Musk said during a town hall in Pennsylvania last month. “Drain the swamps. There’s so many swamps,” he added. He joked that he will probably need “quite a significant security team because someone might literally go postal on me — from the Post Office.” Ramaswamy wants to take a similarly aggressive approach. The tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate said Tuesday that DOGE would soon begin “crowdsourcing examples” of government waste, fraud, and abuse. “Americans voted for drastic government reform & they deserve to be part of fixing it,” Ramaswamy posted Tuesday. Ramaswamy also said he wants to sort out the more than half a trillion dollars a year that goes towards nearly 500 expired federal programs. “This is totally nuts. We can & should save hundreds of billions each year by defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes. We’ll challenge any politician who disagrees to defend the other side,” he posted Wednesday. In September, Ramaswamy floated a “thought experiment” about firing 75% of federal employees immediately with “some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution.” Vivek’s “thought experiment” of cutting 75% of federal govt employees while avoiding lawsuits of unlawful termination due to discrimination. pic.twitter.com/FWgvcBeATm — Steve Hou (@stevehouf) November 13, 2024 “Not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American other than the size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it,” Ramaswamy said during a podcast interview. “All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about but not really effectuated ever in modern history.” Ramaswamy said government agencies are “no different” from private companies in that “it’s 25% of the people who do 80 or 90% of the useful work.” When Musk took over X, he laid off about 80% company’s workforce, more than 6,000 people. While the decision was “not fun at all,” Musk said “drastic action” was necessary because the company was facing “a $3 billion negative cash flow situation” and had just “four months to live.” DOGE is already recruiting employees, and Musk and Ramaswamy will personally review the top 1% of applicants. “We don’t need more part-time idea generators,” the new official DOGE account posted Thursday on X. “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” Musk and Ramaswamy have their work cut out for them. The federal government spends $6.75 trillion a year. Already this year, federal spending has increased by $114 billion. Within that massive amount is a seemingly never-ending list of eyebrow-raising expenditures. Around $900 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars were counted last year in Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) “Festivus Report,” his annual tally of government waste that highlights glaring and often humorous examples. Among the bigger expenses: in fiscal year 2023, the Treasury spent $659 billion on just the interest on the national debt, much of which was borrowed from China, the report noted. Taxpayers are paying to keep the lights on in federal office buildings, the majority of which are mostly empty, one report found.

With much of our ancient past, scientists must rely on fossilized remains to research our roots. The KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum offers a unique opportunity to explore those roots in the form of its living ancient plant garden. @idahopaleobotanist I checked out the Ancient Plant Garden at KU’s Museum of Biodiversity! They have incredible ‘living fossils’ like the Ginkgo tree, cycads, and horsetails—plants that have been around for millions of years. A must-see for any nature lover! #fyp #paleontology #paleobotany #museum #plants ♬ Autumn Leaves – Timothy Cole The University of Kansas Museum is located in Lawrence, KS. Although it contains artifacts such as bones, fossils, and non-living displays, it is also the home of living ancient plants. Visitors can explore the history of biodiversity, from fossils to living relatives in our forests today. Fossil displays include giant horsetails, ferns, and clubmoss trees from hundreds of millions of years ago. Nestled in the live display are living examples of these same plants. The comparison allows visitors to see how little the plants have changed over eons. Image from TikTok. Plant life has been an essential part of the Earth’s ecosystem since the dawn of time. Early herbivores depended on plants for their nutrients. Today, they convert carbon monoxide (CO2) to oxygen (O2), sustaining all living creatures. Lewis and Clark described plant diversity in their travel journals. The explorers chronicled how the diverse plant life provided forage. A healthy ecosystem has four principles: minimizing soil disturbance, plant diversity, soil armor, and continual live plant and root growth. These principles weren’t always recognized, creating conditions like the Dust Bowl when man began increasing agricultural farming. Overfarming, lack of crop diversity, and drought contributed to the Dust Bowl. Fortunately, we have learned from past mistakes and have corrected farming practices that significantly decrease the risk of future problems. The display of ancient plants at KU visually represents plant flexibility. You can take a virtual tour of the ancient plant garden on YouTube. Please share the ancient plant garden. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here. The post Mesmerizing: Explore The Wonders Of The Ancient Plant Garden At Kansas University appeared first on InspireMore.

Our partner Rob Brezsny, who has a new book out, Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle, provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote […] The post An Inspiring Horoscope for Your Week Ahead – ‘Free Will’ Astrology From Rob Brezsny appeared first on Good News Network.

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