Lying press: Germany′s misleading media. How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service. The UN’s Weirdest Crimes: 380 Pounds of Weed, Child Porn, and a Chainsaw on a Plane. Staff at the United Nations downloaded and shared child porn, transported roughly 380 pounds of weed in an official vehicle, and repeatedly threatened each other with murder, according to an annual report on disciplinary matters and cases of criminal behavior issued by the international organization.
The report, carried out by the UN Secretariat, covers the period between July 2014 and June of this year. It does not name the staff involved, their nationalities, or where the offenses took place. Perhaps most alarmingly, four UN employees were dismissed for receiving, storing, and disseminating pornographic images of minors on their official computers and over UN networks. It was unclear if their home countries had filed any charges against the four unnamed individuals. We Could Reduce the Number of Hurricanes By Injecting Particles Into the Atmosphere. As climate change gets worse, and as no clear path to cutting down emissions in a major way emerges, scientists are increasingly considering ways we could re-engineering the Earth itself to cool it down.
Apple, Google and Twitter among 22 tech companies opposing Cisa bill. Twenty-two of the world’s top technology companies are firmly against the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) now on the floor of the Senate, according to a new poll by internet activists Fight for the Future.
The poll lists Apple, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia as opposing the legislation while Comcast, HP, Cisco and Verizon are among the 12 companies who back or have remained silent on the bill. Cisa is aimed at tightening online security but has been criticised as infringing on civil liberties and privacy. The bill could come up for a preliminary vote as early as Wednesday. Within the Senate itself, Cisa has both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition. US Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was succinct in his distaste for the legislation before the body on Tuesday afternoon, addressing his comments to President Barack Obama: “I heard for days that this bill would have prevented the OPM [Office of Personnel Management] attack,” Wyden said. More CEOs donate to Clinton than to any GOP candidate. Most of Clinton's CEO supporters gave to her campaign committee, with an average donation of $2,300, a little less than the $2,700 maximum.
Republican candidates tend to receive much larger donations to their super PACs from smaller groups of CEOs, and Bush's Right to Rise USA super PAC has received the largest amount this year from CEOs, nearly $15 million. Today’s college graduates might not retire till age 75. A Second Snowden Has Leaked a Mother Lode of Drone Docs.
It’s been just over two years since Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of NSA documents, and more than five since Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks a megacache of military and diplomatic secrets.
Now there appears to be a new source on that scale of classified leaks—this time with a focus on drones. On Thursday the Intercept published a groundbreaking new collection of documents related to America’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles to kill foreign targets in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. Half of world's wealth now in hands of 1% of population – report. Global inequality is growing, with half the world’s wealth now in the hands of just 1% of the population, according to a new report.
The Recordings: BAPLAR: SOAS. Special characters (tsade and tet) are in Steve Tinney's Ungkam font, derived from sil.org's Gentium font.
To display them correctly, download the font from oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/fonts. The download is free. There are both a Mac Suitcase version and a Win/Linux OpenType version. How BIG is Samsung? (They Have a Military Department!) Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Is Reached. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Video ATLANTA — The United States, Japan and 10 other Pacific basin nations on Monday agreed after years of negotiations to the largest regional trade accord in history, an economic pact envisioned as a bulwark against China’s power and a standard-setter for global commerce, worker rights and environmental protection.
The announcement here that weary trade officials had finally agreed on the Trans-Pacific Partnership was merely “an important first step,” the United States trade representative, Michael B. Froman, said. Now their agreement faces months of debate in each of the 12 nations, including in Congress, where some bipartisan opposition was immediate. The trade issue also is certain to become a flash point of presidential politics in 2016, with populist anti-trade sentiment roiling both parties. Continue reading the main story Total goods traded with the United States in 2014. Europe just invested over $380 million in an alien-hunting space mission to Jupiter.
In the ultimate quest for life beyond Earth, some of Jupiter’s largest moons hold great potential, and Europe plans to explore that potential in the coming years.
What’s more, their mission just hit a major milestone. On July 17, the European Space Agency — Europe’s version of NASA — announced that they were issuing a contract to award the U.S. Colonizing The Moon May Be 90 Percent Cheaper Than We Thought. DARPA: We Are Engineering the Organisms That Will Terraform Mars. Terraformed Mars, artist's conception.
Image: Daein Ballard/Wikimedia Commons. Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects. The Emdrive has been proposed as a propellantless space propulsion. NASA had investigated and found measurable propulsion. Now German researchers Emdrive experiments have eliminated other possible sources of error and still measure a small (20 micronewtons) of propulsive force. There is a lot of discussion of the Emdrive experiment on the NASA space flight forum. All the Amazing Stuff We Just Learned About Philae's Comet. Although the European Space Agency's Philae comet lander has been incommunicado since July 9, today marks what's easily one of the most significant days in the lander's lifetime. That's because scientists across the globe working with the plucky robot have just released their first wave of discoveries and scientific research collected during Philae's slow rendezvous and inadvertently bouncy landing on comet C-G last fall.
The research is published in seven papers in the journal Science. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "Last November we landed on this comet—a completely new world unlike anything humans have ever seen, and so much more different than we expected or could expect" Stephan Ulamec, the head of the Philae lander mission at the German Aerospace Center, told Popular Mechanics. Biometric cameras scan festival-goers’ faces to target ‘organized criminals’ — RT UK. Biotech firm creates fake rhino horn to reduce poaching. If it becomes possible to safely genetically increase babies’ IQ, it will become inevitable. The Albert Einstein statue at the National Academy of Sciences by Robert Berksin is shown after a light dusting of snow in January in Washington. A retail CEO worth $840 million lives in a Las Vegas trailer park. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking Join Call for Ban on Artificially Intelligent Weapons.
Physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk have joined scores of artificial intelligence and robotics experts calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons” in an open letter published Monday. How Google Became Alphabet, From A to Z. Bill Gates and others invest in Editas for CRISPR gene editing. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images A recently discovered tool that gives scientists the ability to edit DNA — the basic blueprint for life — and to rewrite the genetic codes of humans and other creatures just got a major boost toward breaking through from research to applications that might affect human health.
So Elon Musk's Hyperloop Is Actually Getting Kinda Serious. Someone finally polled the 1% — And it's not pretty. Marianas Trench - Pop 101. Study: Low status men more likely to bully women online.
10 Nordic Principles for a Hyperconnected PlanetDemos Helsinki. Planet Earth is becoming hyperconnected. Fearful Memories Passed Down to Mouse Descendants. From Nature magazine Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of mice reports. Elon Musk talks fossil fuels. Neuroscience's New Consciousness Theory Is Spiritual Why Sweden Is Shifting To A 6-Hour Workday. Mark Zuckerberg just announced he'll pay for hundreds of undocumented student... Tattoo artist Flavia Carvalho helps women heal scars caused by domestic abuse and cancer. Engineers develop state-by-state plan to convert US to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050. Map: Here's where the world is running out of groundwater. Gates to invest $2bn in breakthrough renewable energy projects. Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years. Warming of oceans due to climate change is unstoppable, say US scientists.
Azolla. As Beijing Becomes a Supercity, the Rapid Growth Brings Pains. Ottawa plans to ban microbeads over environmental concerns. What price for cleaner air in the Middle East? - News - Nature Middle East. Real-world exhaust emissions from modern diesel cars. World won't achieve its development goals without India coming through: Bill Gates. Businessinsider. What's Really Going on With the Trade in Services Agreement. Julian Assange on the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Secretive Deal Isn’t About Trade, But Corporate Control. U.S. Manufacturing costs are almost as low as China’s. Trans-Pacific Partnership delegates fail to reach final deal; pharmaceuticals, cars, dairy key sticking points.
War in Space May Be Closer Than Ever. How One Man Realized His Dream of Visiting Every Country. The Most Important Question of Your Life. I hit a milestone today. I've officially saved $800 since March 3rd by not smoking. : personalfinance.