Less than a week after University of Illinois-Chicago student Ruth George was found unresponsive in her car following a brutal attack, her family said they “hold no hatred” toward the man charged with murdering her and that they “grieve with hope.”

The 19-year-old was reported missing by her family on Saturday morning after they had not heard from her since the previous evening, according to UIC Police.

“Her phone was ‘pinged’ to the Halsted Street Parking Garage and UIC Police and family members responded to find Ms. George unresponsive in the back seat of a vehicle owned by her family,” police said in a news release Monday.

The medical examiner later ruled George’s death a homicide by strangulation.

UIC arrested the suspect, 26-year-old Donald D. Thurman, after closely following his transportation habits via security cameras.

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Thurman was taken into custody on Sunday and “gave a full confession to this horrific crime” later that same day, police said.

He was formally charged with first-degree murder and criminal sexual assault the next day.

Also Tuesday, George’s family released a statement saying she “lived out her deep faith in Jesus by loving and serving others, leaving a legacy of Christ-centered kindness and sacrifice,” according to WMAQ.

“She was the beloved baby of our family,” the family’s statement continued.

“We grieve with hope.

“We hold no hatred towards the perpetrator, but our hope is no other girl would be harmed in this way and for a mother to never experience this type of heartache.”

Those who knew her from school held similar views of the student who was ruthlessly killed.

George, the fundraising chair for Delta Epsilon Mu, a pre-health co-ed fraternity, regularly served more than than the group’s two-hours-per-week volunteer requirement, chapter president Kevin Roy told UIC Today.

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George was also part of UIC’s Honors College.

“Some people can light up a room, and Ruthie was one of those people,” Honors College assistant dean Michele McCrillis said.

“But it’s her smile that I remember, and will miss, the most.”

Tomer Kanan, one of George’s professors, read aloud the recommendation letter he would have sent to graduate schools on her behalf.

“Ruthie was a gifted individual in many regards. She was compassionate, enthusiastic, sincere and incredibly dedicated to her studies. She never missed an opportunity to help one of her peers,” he said.

“I believe Ruthie would have made incredible contributions in her future.”

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Look, I’ll be real here: This millennial finds Secret Santa to be profoundly boring.

If you like it, that’s fantastic. There are only so many rooms I can put Bluetooth speakers in. I’ve also been told by my wife (repeatedly, really) that I don’t need any kind of candy or anything like that. It’s not my thing. If I’m roped in, I guess you’re getting … well, a Bluetooth speaker, probably from my last Secret Santa session.

I don’t exactly feel like the whole thing is high-pressured, however. I don’t feel that the eyes of the office or church group are upon me, waiting to castigate me for how much I spend on these gifts. If you like what you get, superb. If you don’t, well, there you go. I’m not calling for it to be banned.

I don’t know if this is a thing with American millennials, but over on Albion’s shores, a study by U.K.’s Jobsite found that there’s massive discontent with Secret Santa rituals, and not because of boredom. In fact, the pressure that they create has led to 35 percent of millennial workers saying they ought to be banned.

Because apparently, if millennials don’t like something, nobody can do it.

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Part of the problem may be — well, let’s face it, is — misplaced priorities.

In a Nov. 8 blog post, Jobsite revealed that 26 percent of young workers had actually incurred overdrafts or gone into their savings to buy gifts for office Secret Santa parties or other “whip-rounds.”

So, why is this? Well, apparently, “[t]he average millennial’s whip-round is 34% more expensive, with their average contribution reaching £9 (and a total of £151 per year, compared to £7 / £99 per year for all workers).”

Let me translate that for you: The average millennial decided to spend 34 percent more than other workers on “whip-rounds.” This is probably because 17 percent felt they were being judged for their contributions and 73 percent say they’d “contributed more than they could afford to an office celebration.”

Do you think Secret Santa should be banned?

0% (0 Votes)

0% (0 Votes)

“As a result, one in five (20%) workers believe that such events should not be celebrated at all in the workplace and 35% of Millennials would even like to see them banned (25% of all workers),” Jobsite reported.

However, the average millennial’s ability to withstand cognitive dissonance knows no bounds: “despite the financial and emotional pressures – The likes of ‘Secret Santa’ are here to stay, as the majority (61%) of UK office workers think they are good for morale, 60% believe they help build a healthy rapport amongst colleagues and a further 64% assert that gifting between employees is a sign of respect and appreciation.

“Interestingly, those aged between 22-38 were more likely to acknowledge these benefits (67% vs 62% on average) – despite being more likely to be on the receiving end of some of the negative side effects of contribution. This implies that while office celebrations carry value, they are in need of a modern-day rethink — especially as two fifths (42%) of the UK workforce deems them ‘old-fashioned’.”

So here’s a plausible explanation Jobsite doesn’t really explore here: Millennials like Secret Santa games (or “whip-rounds” — whatever floats your HMS Pinafore) more than other workers, which means they might spend more on them. And they feel pressure about this because … they’re overanalyzing this, just like everything. They should probably learn some financial continence here and move on.

Good conclusion? Nope: “As a result, one in five (20%) workers believe that such events should not be celebrated at all in the workplace and 35% of Millennials would even like to see them banned (25% of all workers).“

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I’m not quite sure how these two questions are different and suspect it’s because of unclear writing by someone who should be taken aside by their editor. Anyway, that’s still a minority of millennials. We should celebrate that, right?

No, because there are plenty of millennials who believe that what we should do instead is Elizabeth Warren this whole Secret Santa thing.

”A significant proportion of young workers feel like the business should shoulder the burden — rather than adding to the pressures of individual employees. Millennials in employement particularly agree with 24% asking for dedicated company budgets to avoid chipping in, compared to 21% across all UK workers surveyed,” the website read.

You know what? Fine, you’ve convinced me. Ban Secret Santa. Just freaking ban it. Let’s get Jeremy Corbyn into 10 Downing Street and he can offer Britain’s millennials Secret Santa debt forgiveness.

We can export it over here once Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes over the Oval Office. And one day, we’ll talk about how Christianity colonized offices and forced millennials into bank overdrafts in order to buy gifts for office parties.

There’s another possibility, although I’d just as soon not discuss it out of fear of offending millennials. Instead, I would ask them to contribute what they can, don’t worry about what other people think of them, don’t ask their employer to chip in for their Christmas gifts and remember that their job isn’t contingent on whether or not they spent £8 or £15 on their “whip-round” gift.

Radical stuff, this. However, the prospect of the rest of my generational cohort wanting to ban Secret Santa is almost enough to get me to embrace it. Bring on the speakers, folks! Merry Christmas to all, and to all an Echo Dot!

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California has some of the most aggressive mandates for renewable energy production in the country. The state has a 100 percent “clean” energy mandate by 2045, with 60 percent of the state’s electricity mandated to come from renewable energy by 2030. All new houses built in the Golden State must have solar panels on the roof, and several cities (e.g., Berkeley) have banned the use of natural gas in new residential construction. Increasing amounts of wind and solar on the California grid have caused reliability problems, with millions of people forced to endure days without power to alleviate wildfire risk believed to be caused by wind damage to electrical wires and insufficient back-up power when wind and solar are not producing.

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A Saddleback College student with autism and cerebral palsy has finally cleared the sexual misconduct allegations from his transcripts that have plagued him for nearly two years.

Marcus Knight was accused by multiple women in 2018 of sexually harassing them by asking for a “fist bump” – something he was taught at an early age to be a safe way of making friends, since he struggled to do so due to his disabilities – and some selfies. Marcus would routinely use these two methods in an effort to make friends, but thanks to today’s #MeToo culture, where anything that makes a woman uncomfortable is equal to sexual harassment or assault, Marcus was maligned.

This week, Marcus finally prevailed in court and had the misconduct sanctions removed from his transcript. Reporter Toni Airaksinen of The Post Millennial was given exclusive access to documents from Marcus’ case.

“The Court…  hereby concludes that the findings and sanctions issued by Respondents against [Marcus Knight] should be set aside,” the court found after a short trial.

Marcus’ ordeal began in 2018 when one woman reported him for asking for a fist bump, which she said made her uncomfortable. Another woman said Marcus kept looking at her and following her. A third woman said Marcus had “over 300 photos” of her on his phone. This was due to Marcus asking her for a selfie and accidentally hitting the “burst” option on his phone camera because of his cerebral palsy.

Marcus was supposed to attend a hearing over the misconduct allegations, but one of the women refused to testify and didn’t appear for the hearing. Marcus, with some help, was prepared to offer 15 character witnesses at the hearing to defend himself, but the hearing was cancelled. Still, Marcus was sanctioned over the allegations without the chance to respond.

His mother, Aurora, started a GoFundMe account to try and raise money for Marcus’ legal defense. In May of this year, the Knights were able to hire attorney Mark Hathaway, who has been very successful in suing colleges over dubious sexual misconduct claims. In early November it was reported that Marcus’ case would head to court.

Aurora told Airaksinen that she was “very scared” the night before the trial.

“What happens when Marcus tries to transfer to a four-year university? Will the accusations follow him? I am terrified for his future,” she said.

Aurora told Airaksinen that she didn’t understand what happened at the trial, but that Marcus won.

“He is smiling!” Aurora said after the trial. “After court Mark [Hathaway] took a selfie with Marcus. Then we told Marcus he could do a selfie too … he was afraid to do so. But we told him that it was ok, and he finally did!  He wants a fist bump and selfie party!”

Saddleback College now has 30 days to remove the sanctions from Marcus’ record, which should help him going forward.

Marcus is involved with his local church group and school choir, and hopes to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Theater.

via The Daily Wire

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The Chinese Communist Party is censoring pro-Hong Kong speech on its most popular social media app, WeChat.

That censorship extends to Chinese people living in America, according to The Verge. The outlet reported that after pro-democracy candidates in Hong Kong won election in a landslide, Chinese Americans were unable to show their support using the app, even if they were using in it the U.S.

The Verge reported that Bin Xie had his account shut down after the Houston-area information security analyst wrote “The pro-China candidates totally lost” on WeChat. Xie told The Verge that he has since joined a WhatsApp group for Chinese Americans who have been censored on WeChat.

“If you have censorship in China — fine,” he told the outlet. “But in this country? I’m a Republican but on WeChat I suffer the same as Democrats [using WeChat]— we are all censored.”

More from The Verge:

WeChat is owned by China’s Tencent and widely used within the country. Research by Citizen Lab suggests the company has implemented a dual system, with heavy censorship for Chinese users who use the sister app Weixin and less restrictive rules for foreigners. Because both versions are often referred to as WeChat, it’s plausible a WeChat user in the US might find themselves unexpectedly subject to Weixin’s censorship rules.

In a statement emailed to The Verge, a Tencent spokesperson said, “Tencent operates in a complex regulatory environment, both in China and elsewhere. Like any global company, a core tenant is that we comply with local laws and regulations in the markets where we operate.”

The Tencent spokesperson also told the outlet that WeChat and Weixin are separate and that since WeChat’s servers are not in China they are not subject to Chinese law.

“If you register with a Chinese mobile number (+86), you will be using Weixin, the version for Chinese users. If you register by any other method you will be using WeChat, the version for international users,” the spokesperson said. “Weixin and WeChat use different servers, with data stored in different locations. WeChat’s servers are outside of China and not subject to Chinese law, while Weixin’s servers are in China and subject to Chinese law.”

The explanation didn’t explain how users like Xie could have been censored on WeChat.

Another WeChat user who lives in Minnesota told The Verge that he codes his allegedly pro-Communist Party content so that users in China know what he’s really saying. He does this in part to protect his family, who still live in China.

China’s censorship, mass surveillance, and imprisonment of its own people has finally been noticed on an international scale. The internment camps detaining Muslim-minority populations are coming to light, as survivors have noted the rape, torture, and human experimentation taking place in the camps. Human Rights organizations have noted that the camps appear to be used to harvest organs from prisoners for China’s booming “transplant tourism” industry. Wealthy people from around the world can fly to China and buy an organ to have a transplant much quicker than in their home countries.

via The Daily Wire

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On Friday, iconic legacy news institution Newsweek unintentionally encapsulated leftist myopia and willful ignorance when it comes to one of the great social maladies of our time: Soaring death rates among white Americans. “Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat [sic] to their dominant social status, study shows,” Newsweek tweeted.

Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat to their dominant social status, study shows https://t.co/3zGDznL3cG

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 29, 2019

The Newsweek piece cited a new University of Toronto public health study for the proposition that “rising mortality in white Americans is partly due to perceptions that they are losing social status.” Newsweek quoted Arjumand Siddiqi, lead author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health: “The anxiety of whites is coming from a misperception that their dominant status in society is being threatened, which is manifesting in multiple forms of psychological and physiological stress. … Status is a major predictor of health so our team hypothesized that it was a perception among whites that Blacks are economically catching up to them, when, in fact, income inequality and other socioeconomic factors continue to affect Black Americans more unfavorably.” In other words, “white anxiety” is to blame for rising drug/alcohol-induced deaths suicides among white Americans.

Well. It couldn’t have anything to do with our unprecedented national pandemic of transnational terrorist organization-linked Mexican cartels syncing up with the Chinese to commit de facto chemical warfare against vulnerable Americans, could it?

It’s actually the fentanyl. https://t.co/91AXUc9c5I

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) November 29, 2019

It’s totally not due to our porous border and interior enforcement policies and the way the Mexican cartels, mid-level traffickers, and illegal alien foot soldiers all coordinate a national distribution ring of lethal narcotics like fentanyl, right? https://t.co/AvrqBwged6

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) November 29, 2019

The reality, as Daniel Horowitz wrote back in February for Conservative Review, is that our purported mainstream media vanguards are willfully and deliberately ignorant about the lethal nexus of a weak border security policy, feckless interior enforcement, criminal illegal alien networks operating with impunity throughout the nation’s interior, and our debilitating drug and overdose epidemics. “[C]artels not only have control of our border,” Horowitz observed, “but operate with latitude on our shores and have endless illegal alien and transnational criminal networks working for them in all our major cities and even mid-sized cities on the East Coast. This is the key to understanding how illegal immigration is driving the drug crisis.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics lay bare the statistical reality that is our nation’s crippling narcotics crisis. According to CBP Office of Field Operations (OFO) nationwide drug seizure statistics, seizures of cocaine more than doubled over the course of fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2019: From 38,346 pounds to 89,207 pounds. Over the same time span, OFO seizures of methamphetamine increased from 25,495 pounds to 68,585 pound and OFO seizures of fentanyl increased from a negligible 70 pounds to an astounding 2,545 pounds.

There is a well-orchestrated, well-funded, systemic operation to commit chemical warfare upon this nation’s interior. Indeed, drug trafficking is likely the single least discussed aspect of the crisis afflicting our beleaguered southern border over the course of the past year. We have an unprecedented glut of deadly narcotics pouring into the nation. And recall that a sugar packet-sized dose of fentanyl can kill a whole room full of people.

To be sure, depressingly large swaths of this country’s citizenry also suffer from an existential crisis of meaning. Loneliness and despondency are on the rise. All varieties of the nation’s once-proud institutions seem to be failing middle America, en masse. The need for a politics centered around national solidarity has never been greater.

But for goodness’ sake, Newsweek, have the human decency to look just  a little harder at what might be greatly exacerbating soaring rates of white depression and suicide in America. Securing our border once and for all and cracking down on the cartels is hardly anywhere near a panacea for all the ills afflicting our nation, but stanching the supply of lethal narcotics will surely help. A lot.

via The Daily Wire

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via The Western Journal

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The odds are you are shopping this weekend.

An estimated 165 million Americans will shop between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to the National Retail Federation. That includes 39.6 million who said they were considering shopping on Thanksgiving Day, 114.6 million on Black Friday, 66.6 million on Small Business Saturday and 33.3 million on Sunday. On Cyber Monday, 68.7 million are expected to take advantage of online bargains.

To put that into context, the total number of votes cast in the 2016 presidential contest amounted to 136.6 million.

But like voting, shopping has changed dramatically over the last few years. Black Friday is no longer really the beginning of holiday shopping or holiday bargains. Many of the biggest retailers introduced steep discounts at the start of November. And like early voting, early shopping is growing. The National Retail Federation said recently 56% of shoppers had begun gift buying in the first week of November. Twenty-four percent had already completed their shopping.

That takes away some of the sting for retailers from the fact that this will be the shortest post-Thanksgiving shopping season in years, with six fewer days between our turkey-laden feast and Christmas. Retailers do not need the kind of shenanigans deployed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, when the president moved Thanksgiving from the fourth to the third Thursday in November in hopes that a longer shopping season would boost the bottom lines of American businesses. (The move was unpopular and not as effective as hoped and after a few years, FDR moved it back to the fourth Thursday.)

The longer shopping season inexorable rise of online shopping also means that it is harder to judge the strength of consumer spending based on older metrics like mall and department store foot traffic, lines outside of big box stores, and parking lot vacancies. Many of the biggest retailers–including Walmart and Target–now have very popular online stores that compete with Amazon on both prices and convenience. There’s far less reason to wait outside a store for an early opening–and less incentive to brawl with other customers for a limited stock of sale items.

Sales between November and December are expected to increase between 3.8 percent and 4.2 percent compared with last year despite the 18 percent drop in the number of days of the old-school Thanksgiving to Christmas holiday shopping, according to the National Retail Federation. That would put us above the 3.7 percent average annual sales growth over the previous five years and well above the disappointing 2.1 percent growth during the recession scare and volatile stock market last year.

The retail group said it expects online and other non-store sales to increase between 11 percent and 14 percent for the holiday period.

Consumer optimism is running high, unemployment is low, wages are rising and rising fastest at the bottom on the income ladder, and many workers are confident they could find a new job at good pay if they lost their current jobs. All of these factors are likely to boost consumer spending. What’s more, the personal saving rate has been higher this year than in the recent past, indicating that consumers may have more to spend if merchants to convince them to part with some of their saving.

 

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The London Bridge attack on November 29, 2019, comes as knife crime is increased 80 percent in England and Wales.

Breitbart News reported that Friday’s attack occurred just yards from the 2017 Islamic terror attack where nine were killed and dozens injured.

Video footage tweeted by Conflict News reportedly shows police shooting the knifeman:

VIDEO: Footage claims to show the moment police shot a man with a knife on London Bridge. – @CrimeLdn pic.twitter.com/7e0F2W25pU

— Conflict News (@Conflicts) November 29, 2019

On April 1, 2018, the London Times reported “a dramatic surge in knife crime,” and homicides went on to reach a ten-year high in 2018.

On September 17, 2019, Breitbart News reported that the number of murders in London had reached 110 for the year. That represented two more murders than the city had experienced by September 25, 2018, according to the Telegraph. Many of the homicides were attributable to a 52 percent increase in knife crime from 2016-2018.

More broadly speaking, on July 18, 2019, the BBC reported that knife attacks in England and Wales were up 80 percent over the low point for knife crime reached in 2014.

Ironically, the rise in knife crimes comes as restrictive gun controls all but eliminated the ability to defend oneself in Britain. The corresponding violence was already evident by 2014.

On September 24, 2014, Breitbart News reported that gun control had made Britain extremely violent. Gun controls were put in place during the twentieth century via a relentless, incremental push, which began with laws similar to firearm owner identification cards and background checks and ended with a virtual ban on all handguns via the Firearms Act 1997.

In 2009, just 12 years after the passage of the Firearms Act, the Daily Mail described Britain as “the most violent country in Europe.” It reported that Britain had “a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

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