The Hangover News

Good Guy Government Moves
THE VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENT MADE STUFF CHEAPER BY OCCUPYING SHOPS
Authorities arrested store owners and made them slash their prices 

(via)

This weekend, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro sent in the troops to battle inflation.

In response to the price-hikes on products in Daka electronics stores, he sent National Guard troops into the chain's five outlets, had them arrest the managers and force them to start selling products at lower prices – sparking looting at a store in the city of Valencia.

Maduro's government believe that the expensive products demonstrate how rich businessmen and Washington-backed political foes are using price-gouging to wage an economic "war" on his people.

Taking particular umbrage to a washing machine priced at £5,360, he said in a speech to the nation that "bourgeois parasites" were exploiting Venezuela's public.

Continuing, he pledged to carry on his campaign against private businesses hiking up their prices and making household appliances enormously unaffordable, saying, "We're going to comb the whole nation in the next few days. This robbery of the people has to stop."

Typhoon Aftermaths
FILIPINO AUTHORITIES ARE STRUGGLING TO HELP AREAS HIT BY TYPHOON HAIYAN
Up to 10,000 people are said to have died, and relief workers haven't been able to reach a number of towns

(via)

Authorities in the Philippines are struggling to provide aid to some of the areas worst affected by Typhoon Haiyan.

Thousands of troops have been deployed to provide relief to areas hit by the typhoon, but a number of towns and villages have been cut off by storm damage, leaving some areas without clean water and electricity, and with very little food.

Tacloban city administrator Tecson John Lim said, "We don't have enough manpower. We have 2,000 employees, but only about 100 are reporting for work. Everyone is attending to their families."

Around 10,000 are said to have died in the city of Tacloban, one of the worst hit areas, with hundreds dead elsewhere and hundreds of thousands left homeless.

Northern coastal areas of Vietnam are now bracing for the storm as it makes its way across the South China Sea, with some 600,000 people already evacuated from at-risk areas.

Geneva Flouting
A MARINE IS FACING A LIFE SENTENCE FOR EXECUTING AN AFGHAN PRISONER
It's the first time in a generation that a member of the armed forces has been convicted of murder

A Royal Marine on patrol in Afghanistan (Photo via)

(via)

A Marine sergeant is facing life imprisonment after being found guilty of the "execution" of a badly wounded Afghan prisoner.

Despite his conviction – the first time a member of the armed forces has been convicted of murder in a generation – he remains anonymous, being identified only as "Marine A".

The incident was caught on the head camera of another Marine, but only the audio of the murder and a video transcript were made publicly available.

In the footage, Marine A reportedly shoots the prisoner in the chest with a pistol and says, "There you are – shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt. It's nothing you wouldn't do to us," before saying to his colleagues, "Obviously this doesn't go anywhere, fellas. I've just broken the Geneva convention."

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British troops in Helmand, claimed the incident would make life more dangerous for troops, saying, "Execution of prisoners of war is a crime we associate with Nazi storm troopers, not Royal Marines."

Bad News
A EUROPEAN SURVEY SUGGESTS THAT ANTISEMITISM IS ON THE RISE
And it's all because of the internet (and the huge flurry of European far-right groups)

Some Polish fascists (Photo by Henry Langston)

(via)

Three-quarters of the 6,000 European Jewish people polled in a new survey say they have noticed an escalation of antisemitism over the past five years.

A survey of hate crimes and discrimination against Jews in eight EU member states – which, combined, are home to 90 percent of the EU's Jewish population – found there are growing fears over online abuse and hate speech.

The online antisemitism, according to the report, could be contributing to Jewish people's fears about being targeted for their religion, with 46 percent of those polled for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) saying they worried about being verbally assaulted or harassed in public because they were Jewish.

One British respondent reported a "phenomenal" amount of antisemitic material on the internet, saying: "This is – in some ways – setting us backwards, as now young people are circulating content like the [antisemitic conspiracy theory] Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had, prior to the internet, pretty much died out."

John Mann, chair of the UK's all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, said, "The internet is a classic EU territory because it crosses borders and the EU could have a huge impact – if it had a thorough approach to antisemitism and other hatred and abuse on the internet."

Horror Stories
"MUTANT" RATS HAVE INVADED PARLIAMENT
And they're making their way across the rest of the UK

A non-mutant rat (Photo via)

(via)

The House of Commons are reportedly spending £7,000 a month to tackle an infestation of "mutant" rats.

The reason they’re spending so much is because the rats (who have more “evolved” than “mutated”) appear to have developed an immunity to normal poisons.

As well as claiming that around 70 percent of the rodents in some areas of southern England are now poison-proof, scientists have warned that any other creature that eats the rats could be killed because of the large build-up of poison in their stomachs.

According to the International Business Times, these rats are now spreading their way across the rest of Britain, eating poison "like feed".