Not The Onion: Lamb Chop Weight Enforcers Want Warrantless Access to Australians’ Metadata
January 20th, 2016Via: Guardian:
If you are in the business of selling lamb chops, make sure you are weighing them properly: the National Measurement Institute wants warrantless access to Australians’ metadata to help them hunt down supermarkets skimping on portions.
The NMI is one of 61 agencies that has applied to the attorney general, George Brandis, to be classed as a “criminal law-enforcement agency” in order to gain warrantless access to telecommunications data.
The government’s mandatory data retention laws, introduced last year, increased the already vast array of personal phone and internet data of Australians that would be accessible to government agencies, and all without a warrant.
The Planet’s Fisheries Are In Even Worse Shape Than We Thought
January 20th, 2016Via: Huffington Post:
The world’s oceans have been overfished far more than reported, according to a new study.
The report, published in the journal Nature Communications, reanalyzed worldwide catch data and compared it to information that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations uses. Researchers found that from 1950 to 2010, up to 30 percent more fish — more than 35 billion tons a year — were caught than reported to the agency.
Much of this unreported seafood stems from small-scale fisherman, illegal operations and millions of tons of bycatch, or fish accidentally caught and then discarded.
In the same time period, global catch rates have fallen nearly three times faster than estimated as the industry struggles to find healthy populations to fish.
“You have a situation where we have long ceased to live off the interest,” said Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia. “We now live off the capital.”
Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server Contained Information of Special Access Programs
January 20th, 2016Via: NBC:
Emails from Hillary Clinton’s home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, including a level meant to protect some of the most sensitive U.S. intelligence, according to a document obtained by NBC News.
In a letter to lawmakers, the intelligence community’s internal watchdog says some of Clinton’s emails contained information classified Top Secret/Special Access Program, a secrecy designation that includes some of the most closely held U.S. intelligence matters.
Two American intelligence officials tell NBC News these are not the same two emails from Clinton’s server that have long been reported as containing information deemed Top Secret.
Delhi: The Sleep Mafia
January 18th, 2016Via: New York Times:
When midnight approaches in Old Delhi and a thick, freezing fog settles over the city, the quilt-wallah Farukh Khan sits on his corner, watching the market for his services come to life.
They shuffle up one by one, men desperate for sleep. The bicycle rickshaw pullers, peeling one of his 20-rupee, or 30-cent, quilts off a pile, fold their bodies into strange angles on the four-foot seats of their vehicles. The day laborers curl their bodies on the frigid sidewalk, sometimes spooned against other men for warmth.
Those who cannot afford to pay Mr. Khan build fires, out of plastic if necessary, and crouch over them, waiting for the night to be over.
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The story of privatized sleep follows a familiar pattern in this city: After decades of uncontrolled growth, the city government’s inability to provide services like health care, water, transportation and security has given rise to thriving private industries, efficient enough to fulfill the needs of those who can pay.
But shelter, given Delhi’s extremes of heat and cold, is often a matter of survival. The police report collecting more than 3,000 unidentifiable bodies from the streets every year, typically men whose health broke down after years living outdoors. Winter presents especially brutal choices to homeless laborers, who have no place to protect blankets from thieves in the daytime hours. Some try to hide them in the tops of trees.
Big Banks Brace for Oil Loans to Implode
January 18th, 2016Via: CNN:
Big banks are cringing as crude oil is crumbling.
Firms on Wall Street helped bankroll America’s energy boom, financing very expensive drilling projects that ended up flooding the world with oil.
Now that the oil glut has caused prices to crash below $30 a barrel, turmoil is rippling through the energy industry and souring many of those loans. Dozens of oil companies have gone bankrupt and the ones that haven’t are feeling enough financial stress to slash spending and cut tens of thousands of jobs.
Three of America’s biggest banks warned last week that oil prices will continue to create headaches on Wall Street — especially if doomsday scenarios of $20 or even $10 oil play out.
Mistake? Refiner Bids -50 Cents Per Barrel for Low Grade Oil
January 18th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
Oil is so plentiful and cheap in the U.S. that at least one buyer says it would pay almost nothing to take a certain type of low-quality crude.
Flint Hills Resources LLC, the refining arm of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch’s industrial empire, said it offered to pay $1.50 a barrel Friday for North Dakota Sour, a high-sulfur grade of crude, according to a corrected list of prices posted on its website Monday. It had previously posted a price of -$0.50.
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“Telling producers that they have to pay you to take away their oil certainly gives the producers a whole bunch of incentive to shut in their wells,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, said of the price that was posted as negative until Flint Hills revised it on Monday.
Jake Reint, a Flint Hills spokesman, said the price was fixed on the website after the firm incorrectly posted it as negative. The prices reported by Flint Hills Resources and rivals such as Plains All American Pipeline LP are used as benchmarks, setting reference prices for dozens of different crudes produced in the U.S.
Rise of the Robots Will Eliminate More Than 5 Million Jobs
January 18th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
Over five million jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change, according to World Economic Forum research.
5 Countries Spew More Plastic Into the Oceans Than the Rest of the World Together
January 18th, 2016Via: GlobalPost:
In a recent report, Ocean Conservancy claims that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas.
“At this rate, we would expect nearly one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish in our oceans by 2025 — an unthinkable number with drastic economic and environmental consequences,” says Nicholas Mallos, director of Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris program.
62 People Now Own the Same Wealth as Half the World’s Population
January 17th, 2016Via: Independent:
Wealth inequality has grown to the stage where 62 of the world’s richest people own as much as the poorest half of humanity combined, according to a new report.
The research, conducted by the charity Oxfam, found that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population – 3.6 million people – has fallen by 41 per cent, or a trillion US dollars, since 2010.
While this group has become poorer, the wealth of the richest 62 people on the planet has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion.
Obama Declares Emergency in Michigan Over Lead-Contaminated Water
January 17th, 2016Via: CBC:
U.S. President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration Saturday that clears the way for federal aid for Flint, Michigan, which is undergoing a drinking water crisis due to lead-contaminated water.
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The tap water in Flint, population 99,000, became contaminated after the city switched from the Detroit water system to the Flint River while a pipeline to Lake Huron is under construction. The decision to use the river was made while a Snyder-appointed emergency manager was running the city government due to its financial problems. The corrosive water from the Flint River lacked adequate treatment and caused lead to leach from old pipes in homes and schools.
Flint returned to the Detroit system in October after elevated lead levels were discovered in children, and could tap into the new pipeline by summer. But officials remain concerned that old pipes could continue to leach lead, to which exposure can cause behaviour problems and learning disabilities in children as well as kidney ailments in adults.
