Biohackers Are Pirating a Cheap Version of a Million-Dollar Gene Therapy
August 30th, 2019Via: MIT Technology Review:
Citing the tremendous cost of new drugs, an international group of biohackers say they are creating a knock-off of a million-dollar gene therapy.
The drug being copied is Glybera, a gene therapy that was the world’s most expensive drug when it came on the market in Europe in 2015 with a $1 million per treatment price tag. Glybera was the first gene therapy ever approved to treat an inherited disease.
Now a band of independent and amateur biologists say they have engineered a prototype of a simpler, low-cost version of Glybera, and they plan to call on university and corporate scientists to help them check, improve, and test it on animals.
The group says it will start sharing the materials and describe their activities this weekend at Biohack the Planet, a conference in Las Vegas that hosts citizen scientists, journalists, and researchers for two days of presentations on body implants, biosafety, and hallucinogens.
“This was developed in a shed in Mississippi, a warehouse in Florida, a bedroom in Indiana, and on a computer in Austria,” says Gabriel Licina, a biohacker based in South Bend, Indiana. He says the prototype gene therapy cost less than $7,000 to create.
Investigators Seize Enough Fentanyl to Kill 14 Million People in Massive Drug Bust
August 30th, 2019Via: CBS:
Law enforcement officers in Virginia have seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 million people, busting a massive three-state drug ring as part of what they called “Operation Cookout.” Thirty-five suspects were arrested, and four others are on the run.
How to Teach an Iris Scanner That the Eye It’s Looking at Is Dead
August 29th, 2019Via: IEEE:
Conventional wisdom has held that the iris begins decaying only minutes after death. Thanks to Maciejewicz’s work, we discovered that wisdom to be wrong: If cadavers are kept cool, the eyes can still be used for identification for up to three weeks postmortem. Researchers had also assumed that recognition systems could not accurately identify dead eyes, which means that such systems are now vulnerable to exploitation. So to be completely secure, future generations of iris-recognition systems will therefore need more-advanced detection mechanisms, capable of recognizing dead eyes—otherwise, we could find ourselves in a science-fiction future where people could use someone else’s dead eyes to access information or locations they’re not supposed to. Less fantastical, though, the systems will also need to be flexible enough to adapt in instances where there are changes to an iris due to disease, and precise enough to tell whether the iris in question is a fake.
FBI Studies Two Broken Cameras Outside Cell Where Epstein Died
August 29th, 2019Mmm hmm.
Via: Reuters:
Two cameras that malfunctioned outside the jail cell where financier Jeffrey Epstein died as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges have been sent to an FBI crime lab for examination, a law enforcement source told Reuters.
Epstein’s lawyers Reid Weingarten and Martin Weinberg told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan on Tuesday they had doubts about the New York City chief medical examiner’s conclusion that their client killed himself.
The two cameras were within view of the Manhattan jail cell where he was found dead on Aug. 10. A source earlier told Reuters two jail guards failed to follow a procedure overnight to make separate checks on all prisoners every 30 minutes.
He had been taken off suicide watch prior to his death.
The cameras were sent to Quantico, Virginia, site of a major FBI crime lab where agents and forensic scientists analyze evidence.
Cost of U.S. War in Afghanistan: About $1 Trillion
August 29th, 2019Via: BBC:
So, according to the US Department of Defense, the total military expenditure in Afghanistan (from October 2001 until March 2019) was $760bn.
That’s significantly more than the figure given by the Afghan president.
But an independent study carried out by Brown University’s Cost of War Project argues that the official US figures for Afghanistan are a substantial underestimate.
It says they do not include spending on war veterans’ care, money spent on other government departments for war-related activities and the cost of interest on debt incurred to pay for the war.
It estimates the total cost, factoring in these additional elements, is closer to one trillion US dollars.
Sacramento Zombie Apocalypse
August 29th, 2019Via: DailyMail:
‘All we do is lie around, eat ice-cream, have sex, and take drugs,’ said Cali. ‘Man, I love ice-cream.
Carlisle says she needs heroin just to exist. ‘I need it for everything — just to walk and to breathe.
‘I did go to rehab once, she added. ‘In Orangeville I think… or maybe it was somewhere else.’
Why Does DARPA Need A Huge Underground Facility By Friday?
August 29th, 2019Via: Gizmodo:
Attention, city dwellers! We’re interested in identifying university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels & facilities able to host research & experimentation. https://t.co/tHZ1Tqy5nV
It’s short notice… We’re asking for responses by Aug. 30 at 5:00 PM ET. pic.twitter.com/TSWO07bJam
— DARPA (@DARPA) August 28, 2019
Yield Curve Inversions Recessions
August 28th, 2019Via: Economic Collapse Blog:
You can believe that we will somehow beat the odds this time if you want, but history is completely against you. One of the biggest reasons why there is so much anxiety on Wall Street right now is because of how the yield curve is behaving. We have seen yield curve inversions before each of the last seven U.S. recessions, and now it has happened again.
Fake-Branded Gold Bars Slip Into World Markets
August 28th, 2019Via: Reuters:
A forgery crisis is quietly roiling the world’s gold industry.
Gold bars fraudulently stamped with the logos of major refineries are being inserted into the global market to launder smuggled or illegal gold, refining and banking executives tell Reuters. The fakes are hard to detect, making them an ideal fund-runner for narcotics dealers or warlords.
In the last three years, bars worth at least $50 million stamped with Swiss refinery logos, but not actually produced by those facilities, have been identified by all four of Switzerland’s leading gold refiners and found in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the major banks at the heart of the market in bullion, said senior executives at gold refineries, banks and other industry sources.
…
Fake gold bars – blocks of cheaper metal plated with gold – are relatively common in the gold industry and often easy to detect.
The counterfeits in these cases are subtler: The gold is real, and very high purity, with only the markings faked. Fake-branded bars are a relatively new way to flout global measures to block conflict minerals and prevent money-laundering. Such forgeries pose a problem for international refiners, financiers and regulators as they attempt to purge the world of illicit trade in bullion.
Possibly Related: How Drug Lords Make Billions Smuggling Gold to Miami
National-Security Concerns Threaten Undersea Data Link Backed by Google, Facebook
August 28th, 2019The U.S. killed Pacific Fibre back in 2012 due to Chinese involvement.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
U.S. officials are seeking to block an undersea cable backed by Google, Facebook Inc. and a Chinese partner, in a national-security review that could rewrite the rules of internet connectivity between the U.S. and China, according to people involved in the discussions.
