Christian Persecution ‘At Near Genocide Levels’
May 3rd, 2019Via: BBC:
The persecution of Christians in parts of the world is at near “genocide” levels, according to a report ordered by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The review, led by the Bishop of Truro the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen, estimated that one in three people suffer from religious persecution.
Christians were the most persecuted religious group, it found.
Mr Hunt said he felt that “political correctness” had played a part in the issue not being confronted.
The interim report said the main impact of “genocidal acts against Christians is exodus” and that Christianity faced being “wiped out” from parts of the Middle East.
It warned the religion “is at risk of disappearing” in some parts of the world, pointing to figures which claimed Christians in Palestine represent less than 1.5% of the population, while in Iraq they had fallen from 1.5 million before 2003 to less than 120,000.
“Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity,” the Bishop wrote.
Related: China Putting Minority Muslims in ‘Concentration Camps,’ U.S. Says
Tesla Expects Global Shortage of Electric Vehicle Battery Minerals
May 2nd, 2019Via: Reuters:
Tesla Inc expects global shortages of nickel, copper and other electric-vehicle battery minerals down the road due to underinvestment in the mining sector, the company’s global supply manager for battery metals told an industry conference on Thursday, according to two sources.
…
Sarah Maryssael, Tesla’s global supply manager for battery metals, told a closed-door Washington conference of miners, regulators and lawmakers that the automaker sees a shortage of key EV minerals coming, according to the sources.
According to a Tesla spokesman, the comments were industry-specific and referring to the long-term supply challenges that may occur with regards to these metals.
For Lower-Paid Workers, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived
May 2nd, 2019Via: Wall Street Journal:
It’s time to stop worrying that robots will take our jobs — and start worrying that they will decide who gets jobs.
Millions of low-paid workers’ lives are increasingly governed by software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees and regularly fires those who underperform, with almost no human intervention.
Navy UFO Videos? How The DD Form 1910 Does NOT Prove A Public Pentagon Release
May 2nd, 2019Via: The Black Vault:
On April 29, 2019, Mr. George Knapp of KLAS-TV in Las Vegas published a story about the DD Form 1910, and released a leaked copy of it attached to the headline, “EXCLUSIVE: I-Team confirms Pentagon did release UFO videos.”
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I invite you to read the entire page, but I want to focus on instructions for section 7. It states, in part:
7. RECOMMENDATION OF SUBMITTING OFFICE/ AGENCY. It is of paramount importance to components, as large and complex as those which comprise the Department of Defense, that coordinated and consistent security and policy determinations are made; therefore, Item 7 must be completed by an individual who is a government employee (civilian or military), and possesses the authority to communicate a particular component’s policies and recommendation. Contractors may not sign this form.
I highlighted in red, the most important part of the instruction. Yet, on the DD Form 1910 in question, it’s entirely blank.
More: Pentagon DID NOT Release “UFO” Videos
ACLU: Border Agents Violate Constitution When They Search Electronic Devices
May 2nd, 2019Via: NPR:
The American Civil Liberties Union says it has uncovered new evidence that federal border agents are violating the Constitution when they search travelers’ electronic devices.
The ACLU, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the federal government in 2017, alleging that its “warrantless and suspicionless searches” of electronic devices at the U.S. ports of entry violated the First and Fourth amendments. Lawyers now say that, through depositions of border agents, they have learned that the scope of the warrantless searches has expanded far beyond the mere enforcement of immigration and customs laws.
Border officers have the authority to search belongings for contraband, or to determine who is admissible into the U.S., the ACLU said. But agents now “claim authority to search travelers’ devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as looking for potential evidence of illegal activity beyond violations of immigration and customs laws,” plaintiffs wrote.
“That claimed authority extends to enforcing ‘hundreds’ of federal laws, including tax, bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws. Defendants’ asserted purposes for conducting warrantless or suspicionless device searches also include intelligence gathering or advancing pre-existing investigations.”
These practices violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the ACLU wrote. They also violate the First Amendment, attorneys said, because people traveling to the U.S. might censor themselves, knowing that a border agent might look through their phone.
In a filing this week in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, the lawyers asked the government to rule in their favor without a trial.
“Let’s get one thing clear,” the ACLU said in a statement. “The government cannot use the pretext of the ‘border’ to make an end run around the Constitution.”
Virgin Orbit
May 1st, 2019Via: The Verge:
Right now, hundreds of space startups are racing to develop newer, smaller rockets, in order to take advantage of the proliferation of smaller satellites within the aerospace industry. Many of these companies want to get to space the old-fashioned way, by making a rocket that takes off vertically from the ground. But one company has eyed another method for getting to space — by launching underneath the wing of a giant airplane.
This is the strategy of Virgin Orbit, the sibling company to Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit has developed a small rocket called LauncherOne that can put satellites the size of washing machines into orbit. And its launchpad resides at 35,000 feet. Virgin Orbit owns a Boeing 747 airplane, called Cosmic Girl, which carries LauncherOne up into the sky. From there, the rocket will drop from underneath Cosmic Girl’s left wing and then ignite, climbing the rest of the way to orbit.
U.S. Military Stops Releasing Afghanistan War Information
May 1st, 2019Via: AP:
Amid a battlefield stalemate in Afghanistan , the U.S. military has stopped releasing information often cited to measure progress in America’s longest war, calling it of little value in fighting the Taliban insurgency.
The move fits a trend of less information being released about the war in recent years, often at the insistence of the Afghan government, which had previously stopped the U.S. military from disclosing the number of Afghans killed in battle as well as overall attrition within the Afghan army.
The latest clampdown also aligns with President Donald Trump’s complaint that the U.S. gives away too much war information, although there is no evidence that this had any influence on the latest decision.
A government watchdog agency that monitors the U.S. war effort, now in its 18th year, said in a report to Congress on Wednesday that the U.S. military command in Kabul is no longer producing “district control data,” which shows the number of Afghan districts — and the percentage of their population — controlled by the government compared to the Taliban.
With Trump’s Assistance, Oswald’s CIA Files Remain Classified
May 1st, 2019Agent Oswald.
Dark Journalist: “He was, without a doubt, an intelligence asset for the CIA.”
Must Read: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
Via: Just Security:
I awaited the promise of the JFK Records Act of 1992: full disclosure. The law, passed unanimously by Congress, mandated the release of all of the government’s JFK files within 25 years, that is to say, by 2017. The promise, alas, was betrayed by President Trump. He used the one loophole provided in the law, allowing for continued postponement of release of assassination records. Trump, the conspiracy theorist, certified that disclosure would cause “an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” and that “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”
In his October 2017 White House directive, Trump stated he had “no choice” (curious phrase) but to allow federal agencies to continue to withhold thousands of JFK assassination files from public view– including the Joannides files. In April 2018, the National Archives reported that 15,834 assassination records remain redacted, most of them by CIA and FBI. These files will remain sealed until April 2021 at the earliest.
U.S. Searches of Phones, Laptops at Airports Rising
May 1st, 2019Via: AP:
U.S. government searches of travelers’ cellphones and laptops at airports and border crossings nearly quadrupled since 2015 and were being done for reasons beyond customs and immigration enforcement, according to papers filed Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that claims scouring the electronic devices without a warrant is unconstitutional.
The government has vigorously defended the searches, which rose to 33,295 in fiscal 2018, as a critical tool to protect America. But the newly filed documents claim the scope of the warrantless searches has expanded to assist in enforcement of tax, bankruptcy, environmental and consumer protection laws, gather intelligence and advance criminal investigations.
Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement consider requests from other government agencies in determining whether to search travelers’ electronic devices, the court papers said. They added that agents are searching the electronic devices of not only targeted individuals but their associates, friends and relatives.
The U.S. Has a Battery Problem in the Race for Electric Car Supremacy
April 30th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. push to challenge China’s dominance in the production and sale of electric vehicles has at least one weak link: Most of the raw materials needed to make the batteries are dug elsewhere.
Both Chinese and U.S.-based companies have invested heavily in lithium mining projects in Chile, Australia and Argentina, some of the world’s top producing nations. But unlike the U.S., Chinese companies have also invested at home, with the Asian nation producing almost eight times more lithium domestically than the U.S.
