Columbine students hold voter registration rally ahead of shooting anniversary

Students at Columbine High School participated in a voter registration rally Thursday ahead of the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at the school.

The Vote for Our Lives event in Littleton, Colo., featured speakers who survived the mass shooting at Columbine, as well as survivors of the Parkland, Fla., high school mass shooting, Reuters reported.

The event was held the night before students across the country prepare to walk out of schools Friday to protest gun violence.

Students from more than 2,600 institutions plan to walk out of classes at 10 a.m. Friday as part of a call to action by Parkland survivors.

Many Parkland students have become key figures in the anti-gun violence movement since the mass shooting at their school earlier this year that left 17 people dead.

The students organized the March for Our Lives in D.C. last month, drawing in hundreds of thousands of attendees and sparking sister events at cities across the world.

Now the students are focusing on ways to address gun violence and pass restrictions on guns, including registering teenagers and others to vote.

“This movement is the next step in the series of pressure points placed on politicians to take action,” Vote for Our Lives said in a statement to Reuters. “We walked out, then we marched, and now we vote.”

Organizers behind Friday's walkout say their goal is to hold officials accountable, promote possible fixes to gun violence and get more students to participate in politics.

Protesting students are asked to wear orange and hold a 13-second moment of silence to honor the Columbine victims.

Columbine students will not be walking out because the school will be closed as part of a longstanding tradition. Students are asked to participate in community service instead.

Students across the country participated in a similar walkout last month.

A payday lender is accused of stealing millions from customers. Trump’s CFPB is now letting them off the hook.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is taking it easy on payday lenders accused of preying on low-income workers.

In the agency’s first report to Congress since Mick Mulvaney took the helm in November, the CFPB said it is dropping sanctions against NDG Financial Corp, a group of 21 businesses that the agency, under President Obama, had accused of running “a cross-border online payday lending scheme” in Canada and the United States.

“The scheme primarily involved making loans to U.S. consumers in violation of state usury laws and then using unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices to collect on the loans and profit from the revenues,” the CFPB lawyers argued in the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York in 2015.

The CFPB’s lawsuit had been winding its way through the courts until Mulvaney took over the bureau. One of the lead attorneys defending the payday lenders was Steven Engel, who is now assistant attorney general at the US Justice Department, and who was listed as an active attorney in the case until November 14, the day after he was sworn into office.

In February, the agency dismissed charges against six defendants in the case, according to federal court records. The reason for the dismissal was not explained in the court motion, and the CFPB declined to answer Vox’s questions about the case.

Now the CFPB is “terminating sanctions” against the remaining defendants, according to the agency’s latest report to Congress. A federal judge had sanctioned the uncooperative defendants in March by entering a default judgment against them, which held them liable for the charges of unfair and deceptive business practices. The next step was to figure out how much they would pay in damages to consumers and attorney’s fees — a step that the CFPB suggests it won’t be taking anymore.

The CFPB’s dismantling of the case against NDG is the latest example of the bureau backing off of payday loan companies accused of defrauding consumers — an industry that donated more than $60,000 to Mulvaney’s past congressional campaigns.

The industry also appears to be currying favor with the Trump administration another way: This week, the Community Financial Services Association of America, which represents payday lenders, is holding its annual conference at Trump National Doral near Miami — a gathering that has been greeted by protesters.

A new day for payday lenders

In January, the CFPB dropped another lawsuit against four online payday lenders that allegedly stole millions of dollars from consumers’ bank accounts to pay debts they didn’t owe. A different payday lender, World Acceptance Group (a past donor to Mulvaney’s campaigns), announced that month that the CFPB had dropped its probe of the South Carolina company.

In March, a Reuters investigation found that the agency had also dropped a lawsuit lawyers were preparing to file against another payday lender, called National Credit Adjusters, and that Mulvaney was weighing the possibility of halting lawsuits against three others. Those cases sought to return $60 million to consumers for alleged abusive business practices.

The agency has not explained why the cases were dropped. And Mulvaney was candid with members of Congress about the bureau’s new approach to protecting consumers. “The bureau practice of regulation by enforcement has ceased,” he told members of the House Financial Services Committee on April 11.

Indeed, the CFPB has taken only one new enforcement action against financial companies since Mulvaney took over, a massive fine against Wells Fargo announced Friday. But it has gone even further to help payday loan businesses — dismissing cases and investigations that were already underway, for no stated reason.

Payday loans are terrible for consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which sought to regulate banks and lenders in the wake of the financial crisis. One of the main reasons for creating the quasi-independent agency was to protect consumers in the financial sector, particularly those consumers seeking mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. The CFPB regulates the financial arena in other ways — for instance, to make sure lenders aren’t discriminating against certain customers (a mission that is also being rolled back).

Payday loans have long been one of the sketchiest financial products available to consumers. These short-term loans are typically offered to low-income workers who don’t have credit or have bad credit. They are essentially a paycheck advance when someone needs cash to pay a bill.

But the fees are astronomical. For example, most payday loans charge a percentage or dollar amount for every $100 borrowed. According to the CFPB, $15 for every $100 is common, and amounts to a 391 annual percentage rate (APR) for a two-week loan. But the way they trap consumers in a cycle of debt is through their access to the customer’s bank account, either through a check or ACH transfer.

On the worker’s payday, they cash the check for the full amount of the loan and fees. That means the worker has even less money to pay bills for next month, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

[Payday lenders] take the money out regardless of whether there is enough money in the account to cover living expenses. Sometimes this leads to overdrafts or insufficient funds fees. Sometimes it compels the customer to take another loan to cover living expenses.

The CFPB estimates that 12 million Americans used payday loans in 2013, which includes traditional storefront locations and online payday lenders. That year, about 90 percent of all loan fees came from consumers who borrowed seven or more times, according to the agency, and 75 percent were from consumers who borrowed 10 or more times.

Those numbers show how dependent payday lenders are on keeping customers trapped in debt and unable to pay their bills.

This business model has sparked so much controversy that at least 15 states and the District of Columbia have banned payday lending. And the Pentagon considered these loans so harmful to military service members that Congress banned businesses from providing them to military personnel back in 2006.

Now, under Mulvaney’s leadership, the CFPB is letting payday lenders continue these practices, much to the aggravation of consumer advocates. The head of the Center for Responsible Lending slammed Mulvaney after news broke that he was dropping the lawsuit against National Credit Adjusters and three other payday lenders.

“Mick Mulvaney is letting predatory payday lenders off the hook while they rip off American consumers,” Diane Standaert, executive vice president for the consumer watchdog group, said in a statement. “The companies...have a well-documented history of causing borrowers financial devastation. If they have committed illegal actions, they should be held accountable.”

Mulvaney plans to ease rules for payday companies

Before Richard Cordray stepped down as director of the CFPB, the agency had just finalized a rule to prevent payday lenders from giving money to people who can’t repay the loans.

The regulation, known as the Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment, requires lenders to check whether a borrower can repay the loan before making it. The agency argued that the rule would still give consumers access to short-term loans because they could still take out six payday loans per year regardless of their ability to pay back the money. Lenders would only need to verify a customer’s likelihood to repay the debt when they take out a seventh loan or more.

In January, the CFPB released a statement saying that it plans to reconsider the rule, which is set to go into effect in August. Mulvaney said during congressional testimony that the wanted to “reconsider elements that may create unnecessary burden or restrict consumer choice.”

Payday lenders have been pushing back against the rule, and on Monday, they filed a lawsuit to block it before it goes into effect.

Community Financial Services Association of America, the largest trade group for payday lenders, says the rule would “virtually eliminate” their business model, which provides short-term loans to millions of low-income consumers who lack access to credit cards or bank loans. The Consumer Service Alliance of Texas joined the trade group in the lawsuit filed in a federal district court in Austin.

In all, 2018 is turning out to be a good year for payday lenders. 

FDA Panel Unanimously Backs Cannabis Drug for Severe Epilepsy

 A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee has voted unanimously to support approval of a purified formulation of cannabidiol (Epidiolex, GW Pharmaceuticals) as an adjunctive treatment for Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome (DS) in patients 2 years of age or older.

Although there are medications already on the market that include synthetic cannabinoid chemicals, if approved, this would be the first pharmaceutical formulation of a plant-based cannabinoid that maintains the mechanism of action of the chemical but without the "high" associated with marijuana, according to the manufacturer.

The Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee had almost no concerns about the safety or effectiveness of Epidiolex, and congratulated the FDA, the manufacturer, and patients and families for having presented solid evidence.

"This is clearly a breakthrough drug for an awful disease," said panelist John Mendelson, MD, a senior research scientist at the Friends Research Institute, San Francisco, California.

"It's an honor to be part of a meeting that's making an important decision based on science and public input rather than a political discussion," said panel member Mark W. Green, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology, anesthesiology, and rehabilitation medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York City.

"This is a historic moment," said Michael Privitera, MD, director of the epilepsy center at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was an investigator for one of the pivotal studies. Privitera said he paid his own way to the meeting and receives no money from GW Pharmaceuticals. "We don't really understand how it stops seizures, but it's different than any other drug we've seen," he said, adding that it was rigorously studied.

"This will be more reliable than the dispensary marijuana that's available in many states," Privitera added.

The FDA usually follows its panels' advice. Billy Dunn, MD, director of the FDA's Division of Neurology Products, said the agency is "reviewing [Epidiolex] on an expedited timeline." The agency is due to make a decision by June 27. Epidiolex is also being reviewed by the European Medicines Agency, which accepted the company's application in February.

No Risk for Abuse

Even though Epidiolex is derived from marijuana (Cannabis sativa), it does not have properties conducive to abuse, said the FDA reviewers. That is crucial, because currently, Epidiolex is considered to be a Schedule I drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). If the FDA approves Epidiolex, it will make a recommendation to the DEA that the drug be rescheduled.

If Epidiolex is rescheduled, GW Pharmaceuticals expects to make it available to physicians as soon as possible — most likely during the second half of this year — company CEO Justin Gover told Medscape Medical News. The company is proposing an initial target dose of 10 mg/kg daily, with dose adjustments up to 20 mg/kg, based on clinical response and tolerability.

One of the company's pivotal safety and efficacy trials in patients with LGS was published online January 24 in the Lancet. Data from that trial and two other pivotal studies were presented at the advisory panel meeting.

The primary endpoint — percentage reduction in drop seizures in LGS patients and percentage reduction in convulsive seizures in DS patients — was statistically significant for patients who received 14 weeks of treatment.

Brooklyn postal worker arrested after 17,000 pieces of undelivered mail found

A Brooklyn postal worker was arrested after 17,000 pieces of undelivered mail were found in his car, apartment and home, authorities said.

Aleksey Germash, a letter carrier who’s worked for the United States Postal Service for more than 16 years, had undelivered mail from as far back as 2005 in his possession. He told investigators he kept the mail because was overwhelmed by the amount he had to deliver each day. Germash said he made sure to deliver “the important mail.”

Officials found about 10,000 pieces of undelivered mail in his car, approximately 1,000 pieces in his locker and around 6,000 additional pieces of undelivered mail in his apartment.

They started investigating after they received information about full mail bags inside Germash’s car. USPS employees found 20 full bags in his car on April 18.

He was arrested April 19.

Germash is not the first postal worker to keep mail instead of delivering it. Agents arrested a Long Island letter carrier earlier this month after they found dozens of bags filled with undelivered mail behind his home.

Anyone who thinks they may have been a victim of mail theft or slow delivery can call 888-USPS-OIG or file a complaint online at USPSOIG.gov.

Alex Jones, Backtracking, Now Says Sandy Hook Shooting Did Happen

Talk show host Alex Jones has responded to a lawsuit from the parents of two children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. Jones has repeatedly claimed on his website, Infowars, that the shooting was staged.

In a YouTube video, Jones said he now believes the shooting really happened, and that the families are being used by the Democratic Party and the news media. Jones invited the parents onto his program for a discussion about guns.

In the past, Jones has repeatedly claimed the shooting was staged and that parents of children who died in the shooting are actors.

The plaintiffs are the parents of Jesse Heslin and Noah Pozner, who were among the 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School who died in the shooting. They’re seeking at least $1 million from Jones. The lawsuit alleges Jones’s misinformation led conspiracy theorists to make death threats against the families of shooting victims.

The Mystery Of The Margate Shell Grotto (20 Pics)

In 1835 a labourer was digging a field just outside the English seaside town of Margate.  His work was interrupted when he thrust his spade in to the soil and it simply vanished in to the ground.  The master of the nearby Dane House School, James Newlove, was made aware of this strange disappearance.  He volunteered his young son, Joshua, for the task of being lowered, candle in hand, in to the void via a length of rope

Joshua’s tale was nowhere near as tall as people may have at first imagined.  When the hole was widened enough for adults to enter they too witnessed the wondrous contents of the winding subterranean passageway, complete with an altar chamber and rotunda.  Newlove senior, a canny schoolmaster if ever there was one, was first to consider the financial benefits such a discovery might reap.  He hurriedly purchased the land above the mysterious chamber and began to adapt it so that visitors might enter – for a small charge of course. In 1837, just two years after its discovery, the grotto opened to a curious public.  Yet to this day debate rages (in a very English way, of course, involving polite discussion over tea and cucumber sandwiches) about it origins.

How it came to be originally built remains unexplained.  However, the 2000 square feet of mosaics, created from mussel, cockle, whelk and oyster shells have provoked a multitude of explanations none of which have been confirmed with any total surety.

Shell grottoes of this type were extremely popular in the Europe of the 1700s. Many suppose that this was the result of a local bigwig embarking on the Grand Tour and returning with a desire to recreate a highlight of his or her European expedition.  Yet although this is not without the realms of possibility, the land above the grotto never formed part of any large estate, which is where you would expect such an extravagance to be positioned – close enough to the big house to easily chaperone curious guests to its confines. These visitors would be impressed both by the owner’s wealth and aesthetics because, frankly, this kind of thing was built to do both. 

Moreover, had the grotto been built in the 1700s then there would have been some vestigial local memory (or legend) of its construction.  In order to get millions of shells in to this underground passage many local people would have to have been involved in their transport.  Yet the discovery in 1835 was a surprise to all – no one stepped forward with any explanation.

It has been suggested that the grotto was a smuggler’s cave – almost all the shells are British and so it could have been a hideaway made by locals for stolen and contraband goods.  Yet this idea doesn’t hold much water either. Although near to the sea, the waves remain stubbornly a number of miles away and there are no tunnels from coast to ‘cave’. Plus with a distinct lack of an escape route any smuggler would have been mad to hide their booty here – not to mention the fact that they would have had to spend more of their time decorating the place than doing any actual smuggling. So, it’s a no to that theory as well.

Could it be a Roman temple?  A remnant of dark-age rituals?  A prehistoric astronomical calendar? Make up a theory and it could well be feasible – and many have.  There have even been séances held in the grotto to try and contact the spirits of the builders, such as the one from the 1930s above.

A number of the shells have been vandalised over the years by visitors.  Even though this is difficult to condone it adds an extra layer of history to the place.

The latest research which took place in 2006 points towards an explanation which might please Indiana Jones fans.  Mick Twyman of the Margate Historical Society put forward the suggestion that the grotto was built by the Knights Templar or their associates sometime in the middle 1100s.  He has suggested this after a painstaking measurement of angles inside the grotto (a temple now, perhaps?) and the way that the sunlight is projected in to the inside of the dome.   The altar chamber certainly looks the part of an early temple for masonic rituals. Yet this kind of theory, unlike its scientific namesake, isn’t proof – just conjecture however sensible and enlightened.

Why not get the shells carbon-dated?  This is certainly a possibility for the current owner (the grotto has always been in private hands although recent restoration work has been done in partnership with English Heritage, the charity that looks after the National Heritage Collection of the country).  However, this has been advised against for a number of reasons.  First and foremost quite a number of shell samples would be needed to ensure that dating caught the earliest shells and not just those used in previous (unknown) restoration work over the centuries.  Secondly it’s expensive and money needs to be more urgently spent on conservation rather than speculative investigation, however scientific and potentially illuminating.

How did the shells look before the decades of gas-lit exhibition and when water damage had not bleached them? A modern recreation of a panel from the grotto shows how it must have dazzled visitors in its heyday.

Yet, perhaps it is best to leave well alone in terms of a definitive origin story.  After all, even a secure dating of the oldest shells in the grotto would only establish their age – it would hardly go any further in discovering who built the grotto and why.  Sometimes it’s simply best to allow imagination to flourish and allow visitors to create their own history for this amazing place.

Family Adopts A Squirrel And Turns Him Into A House Pet (20 Pics)

Squirrels aren't usually the type of animals that people keep as a house pet but this family in Finland decided to take one in after they found him badly injured. They named it Arttu and he lived with the family for 6 happy years before he passed away.

The baby squirrel was found injured by the side of a road

“When it seemed like he had recovered, we tried to release him back to the wild but he fell from a tree and hit a rock”

“He survived, but we realized that his eye would never heal completely and he wouldn’t survive on his own”

“His name was Arttu (pretty much the Finnish version of ‘Arthur’)”

“We were very surprised how ‘tame’ he became”

“He liked to have playful ‘fights’ with our hands (you know, like cats do) and he was smart enough not to bite too hard”

“He also liked to take naps in our pockets”

“He even recognized his ‘family’ and became very wary if there were strangers nearby”

“[We fed him] nuts, fruits, berries and mushrooms”

Even when they let him go, he always came back – “He stayed there for a while and then jumped back to my shoulder”

“Squirrel’s claws grow all the time so we had to occasionally cut them because he couldn’t wear them out naturally”

The flash in this photo reveals the glow of his good eye…

…while this one shows his gray and cloudy blind eye

“He died of old age. One morning I found him dead, curled up in his ‘nest’ like he was sleeping”