Pentagon Task Force: We Want Villas and Flat-Screen TVs in Afghanistan
December 3rd, 2015Via: ProPublica:
The requirements were clear: Villas with no less than queen beds, flat-screen TVs of no less than 27 inches, meals of at least three stars, and round-the-clock bodyguards.
Sounds more like a celebrity rider than a description of Afghanistan accommodations for U.S. government employees. But that’s what the Pentagon’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations requested — at a cost of $150 million, according to a letter released today by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.
The high-end demands add to a string of recent controversies involving the now-defunct task force. Last month SIGAR reported that the task force spent $43 million on a gas station that should have cost about $500,000 and had no customers regardless. There are also allegations the Pentagon has retaliated against a task force whistleblower as well on-going criminal investigations. And a standoff between SIGAR and Pentagon officials over access to documents that has gotten the attention of Congress.
Google Increasing Staff in Makani Energy Kites Division
December 2nd, 2015Via: Business Insider:
GoogleX is ramping up recruiting at Makani, hinting that the ambitious project to create “energy kites” that generate cheap wind power is moving closer to reality.
In the past few months, Google has posted more than 30 Makani job openings, and a recent posting on the company’s LinkedIn page boasts that the team is “growing rapidly.”
The division has said that its experimental technology can produce 50% more energy with 90% less materials than traditional wind turbines.
The 16 most recent postings on Google’s hardware engineering careers page advertise positions at Makani, including electrical engineer of avionics hardware, aerodynamicist, and offshore wind program manager.
Other postions hint that the project could be moving closer to releasing a real product. For example, Makani is looking for a sales engineer, to be the “customer-facing expert on Makani’s revolutionary new wind power technology as it’s presented to customers for the first time.”
Google acquired Makani in 2013, after investing $15 million in the startup several years before. It joined Google’s moonshot lab, Google X, and has remained within X even as Google segmented itself into stand-alone divisions under parent company Alphabet earlier this year.
San Bernardino Shooting
December 2nd, 2015Update: San Bernardino Shooting Investigated as ‘Act of Terrorism’
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Via: KABC:
Police said up to 14 people were killed when one or more gunmen opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino Wednesday. At least one suspect was killed in a dramatic shootout.
WATCH: Live coverage of the active-shooting situation in San Bernardino
A second suspect’s body was pulled out of a bullet-riddled SUV. Police have not yet confirmed that the suspects were related to the shooting at the Inland Regional Center, but they had earlier said that the gunmen may have fled in a dark SUV.
A massive police presence was seen in the area, and surrounding streets have been shut down due to the gun battle.
Russia Says It Has Proof Turkey Involved in Islamic State Oil Trade
December 2nd, 2015Via: Reuters:
Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq.
Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a war of words since last week when a Turkish air force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border, the most serious incident between Russia and a NATO state in half a century.
Erdogan responded by saying no one had the right to “slander” Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State, and that he would stand down if such allegations were proven to be true. But speaking during a visit to Qatar, he also said he did not want relations with Moscow to worsen further.
At a briefing in Moscow, defense ministry officials displayed satellite images which they said showed columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at installations controlled by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and then crossing the border into neighboring Turkey.
The officials did not specify what direct evidence they had of the involvement of Erdogan and his family, an allegation that the Turkish president has vehemently denied.
Alabama: Dothan Police Planted Drugs on Young Black Men For Years, DA Complicit
December 2nd, 2015Via: Henry County Report:
The Alabama Justice Project has obtained documents that reveal a Dothan Police Department’s Internal Affairs investigation was covered up by the district attorney. A group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on young black men for years. They were supervised at the time by Lt. Steve Parrish, current Dothan Police Chief, and Sgt. Andy Hughes, current Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama. All of the officers reportedly were members of a Neoconfederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “racial extremists.” The group has advocated for blacks to return to Africa, published that the civil rights movement is really a Jewish conspiracy, and that blacks have lower IQ’s . Both Parrish and Hughes held leadership positions in the group and are pictured above holding a confederate battle flag at one of the club’s secret meetings.
The documents shared reveal that the internal affairs investigation was covered up to protect the aforementioned officers’ law enforcement careers and keep them from being criminally prosecuted.
Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison. Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement.
U.S. Total Debt Soars By $674 Billion In November
December 2nd, 2015Via: ZeroHedge:
When the US reached a debt ceiling deal in the beginning of November, it was common knowledge that there would be a debt accrual “catch up” to make up for lost time when the US was operating under emergency measures to avoid breach of the debt ceiling. And sure enough, when the accurate total debt number was released on November 2, this was indeed the case, when we learned that the US had added some $339 billion in debt during the “emergency measures” period.
However, what is unclear is how in the remaining 4 weeks of November, the US managed to add another $335 billion in total debt, bringing the total increase for the month of November to a whopping $674 billion, and total US debt to a record $18.827 trillion.
Zuckerberg-Chan to Give Away 99% of Facebook Shares to “Advance Human Potential and Promote Equality for All Children in the Next Generation”
December 1st, 2015Via: USA Today:
Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan celebrated the birth of a baby girl with the stunning announcement they plan to give away most of their fortune through a new initiative to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”
The billionaire Facebook founder and chief executive and his physician wife pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares in their lifetime, currently worth about $45 billion. They made the announcement in a letter to their newborn daughter Max posted on Facebook on Tuesday, the national day of giving known as #GivingTuesday. Max was born “early the week of Thanksgiving,” Facebook said.
“Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities,” Zuckerberg and Chan wrote to their daughter. “We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.”
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Full Text of Zuckerberg Letter
China ‘Clone Factory’ Scientist Eyes Human Replication
December 1st, 2015Eyes…
Via: AFP:
The Chinese scientist behind the world’s biggest cloning factory has technology advanced enough to replicate humans, he told AFP, and is only holding off for fear of the public reaction.
Boyalife Group and its partners are building the giant plant in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, where it is due to go into production within the next seven months and aims for an output of one million cloned cows a year by 2020.
But cattle are only the beginning of chief executive Xu Xiaochun’s ambitions.
In the factory pipeline are also thoroughbred racehorses, as well as pet and police dogs, specialised in searching and sniffing.
Boyalife is already working with its South Korean partner Sooam and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve primate cloning capacity to create better test animals for disease research.
And it is a short biological step from monkeys to humans — potentially raising a host of moral and ethical controversies.
“The technology is already there,” Xu said. “If this is allowed, I don’t think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology.”
Q-Carbon
November 30th, 2015Via: PhysOrg:
Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.
Phases are distinct forms of the same material. Graphite is one of the solid phases of carbon; diamond is another.
“We’ve now created a third solid phase of carbon,” says Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and lead author of three papers describing the work. “The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.”
Q-carbon has some unusual characteristics. For one thing, it is ferromagnetic – which other solid forms of carbon are not.
“We didn’t even think that was possible,” Narayan says.
In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond, and glows when exposed to even low levels of energy.
The Secret Message Hidden in Every HTTP/2 Connection
November 30th, 2015Via: jgc:
If you spy on an HTTP/2 connection starting up you’ll notice that it sends an almost-but-not-quite valid HTTP request at the very start of the connection…
Written a little more clearly that’s:
PRI * HTTP2.0
SM
The HTTP verb is PRI and the body contains just SM. Put them together and you get… PRISM.
