Kenya Will Start Teaching Chinese to Elementary School Students from 2020
January 9th, 2019Via: Quartz:
Kenya will teach Mandarin in classrooms in a bid to improve job competitiveness and facilitate better trade and connection with China.
The country’s curriculum development institute (KICD) has said the design and scope of the mandarin syllabus have been completed and will be rolled in out in 2020. Primary school pupils from grade four (aged 10) and onwards will be able to take the course, the head of the agency Julius Jwan told Xinhua news agency. Jwan said the language is being introduced given Mandarin’s growing global rise, and the deepening political and economic connections between Kenya and China.
“The place of China in the world economy has also grown to be so strong that Kenya stands to benefit if its citizens can understand Mandarin,” Jwan noted. Kenya follows in the footsteps of South Africa which began teaching the language in schools in 2014 and Uganda which is planning mandatory Mandarin lessons for high school students.
Mobile Carriers Selling Phone Location Data
January 9th, 2019Via: TechCrunch:
Last year, four of the largest U.S. cell carriers were caught selling and sending real-time location data of their customers to shady companies that sold it on to big spenders, who would use the data to track anyone “within seconds” for whatever reason they wanted.
At first, a little-known company LocationSmart was obtaining (and leaking) real-time location data from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint and selling access through another company, 3Cinteractive, to Securus, a prison technology company, which tracked phone owners without asking for their permission. This game of telephone with people’s private information was discovered, and the cell carriers, facing heavy rebuke from Sen. Ron Wyden, a privacy-minded lawmaker, buckled under the public pressure and said they’d stop selling and sharing customers’ locations.
And that would’ve been that — until it wasn’t.
Now, new reporting by Motherboard shows that while LocationSmart faced the brunt of the criticism, few focused on the other big player in the location-tracking business, Zumigo. A payment of $300 and a phone number was enough for a bounty hunter to track down the participating reporter by obtaining his location using Zumigo’s location data, which was continuing to pay for access from most of the carriers.
Pro-Vaccine Medical Expert Used by the Federal Government to Debunk the Vaccine-Autism Link, Says Vaccines Can Cause Autism After All
January 9th, 2019Via: Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson:
A special federal vaccine court has paid out billions for injuries from brain damage to death. But not for the form of brain injury we call autism. Now—we have remarkable new information: a respected pro-vaccine medical expert used by the federal government to debunk the vaccine-autism link, says vaccines can cause autism after all. He claims he told that to government officials long ago, but they kept it secret.
Golden Globe Flu Shot Gag
January 8th, 2019Desperation?
Via: YouTube:
Second Body Found in West Hollywood Home of Democratic Donor Ed Buck
January 8th, 2019Via: Los Angeles Times:
A man’s body was found early Monday in the West Hollywood home of prominent Democratic donor Ed Buck, authorities said.
It was the second time a man was found dead at Buck’s apartment. Buck is a longtime political donor, a one-time West Hollywood City Council candidate and a well-known figure in LGBTQ political circles.
Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s West Hollywood station responded to the Laurel Avenue apartment complex at 1:05 a.m. in response to a report of a person not breathing, the department said in a statement. At some point, the 911 caller performed CPR, the department said.
Paramedics pronounced a man dead at the scene. The cause of death was not yet known.
The dead man’s name has not been released, but Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department, said he was black.
Buck previously was investigated for the death of another black man, the 2017 overdose of Gemmel Moore, 26.
Buck was present for the deaths of both men, the Sheriff’s Department said Monday.
Buck’s attorney, Seymour Amster, said Buck was not arrested and is cooperating with investigators.
Hyundai’s Elevate Robotic Walking Car
January 8th, 2019Via: New Atlas:
Imagine if an emergency vehicle could not only bring the team of responders to the edge of the disaster zone but actually step right in, striding over top flaming rubble to get responders exactly where they need to be. Forget last mile, that’s last 100 yards. And that’s the all-new Hyundai Elevate concept, moving through the world on fully articulated wheeled legs that let it climb vertical walls, hop over crevasses, crawl like a reptile and quietly cruise the highway on a sunny day.
U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries
January 8th, 2019Via: Johns Hopkins:
The United States, on a per capita basis, spends much more on health care than other developed countries; the chief reason is not greater health care utilization, but higher prices, according to a study from a team led by a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researcher.
The paper appears in the January issue of Health Affairs.
The researchers determined that the higher overall health care spending in the U.S. was due mainly to higher prices—including higher drug prices, higher salaries for doctors and nurses, higher hospital administration costs and higher prices for many medical services.
The paper finds that the U.S. remains an outlier in terms of per capita health care spending, which was $9,892 in 2016. That amount was about 25 percent higher than second-place Switzerland’s $7,919. It was also 108 percent higher than Canada’s $4,753, and 145 percent higher than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) median of $4,033. And it was more than double the $4,559 the U.S. spent per capita on health care in 2000—the year whose data the researchers analyzed for a 2003 study.
75% of Med Students Are on Antidepressants or Stimulants (or Both)
January 5th, 2019Via: Ideal Medical Care:
“Have you ever been depressed as a physician?” I asked 220 doctors. Ninety percent stated yes. Yet few seek professional help. Here’s what depressed doctors do (when nobody’s looking). Some drink alcohol, exercise obsessively, even steal psychiatric meds. Still more shocking—I discovered that 75% of med students (and new doctors) are now on psychiatric medications.
“I was told by the psychologist at my med school’s campus assistance program, that 75% of the class of 175 people were on antidepressants,” shares psychiatrist Dr. Jaya V. Nair. “He wasn’t joking. How broken is the system, that doctors have to be pushed into illness in order to be trained to do their job?”
“During my internship, I found out that at least 75% of my fellow residents were on SSRIs or other antidepressants, just ‘to get through it’ because it was so horrible.” states Dr. Joel Cooper, “Depression, or a constantly depressed state, is more or less the norm in medical school and throughout one’s residency.”
“When I left my residency, I was alarmed to find out that about 75% of my fellow residents had started antidepressants since their intern year,” says Dr. Jill Fadal.
Seems the epidemic of depressed doctors begins in medical school. I wondered how best to verify this oft-repeated 75% statistic. Just then a student called to tell me what her professor said during orientation: “Look around the room. By the end of your first year, two-thirds of your class will be on antidepressants.”
China Makes Historic 1st Landing on Mysterious Far Side of the Moon
January 3rd, 2019Via: Space:
Humanity just planted its flag on the far side of the moon.
China’s robotic Chang’e 4 mission touched down on the floor of the 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán Crater Wednesday night (Jan. 2), pulling off the first-ever soft landing on the mysterious lunar far side.
Chang’e 4 will perform a variety of science work over the coming months, potentially helping scientists better understand the structure, formation and evolution of Earth’s natural satellite. But the symbolic pull of the mission will resonate more with the masses: The list of unexplored locales in our solar system just got a little shorter.
Apple: People Bought Fewer New iPhones Because They Repaired Their Old Ones
January 3rd, 2019In case you had any doubts about why Apple viciously attacks those who repair iPhones…
Via: Vice:
Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a letter to investors alerting them that the company would miss its revenue targets in part because Apple didn’t sell as many iPhones as it expected. The lengthy letter cites, specifically, that people are buying fewer iPhones because they are repairing their old ones.
Apple has long fought efforts that would make iPhones easier to repair: It has lobbied against right to repair efforts in several states, doesn’t sell iPhone replacement parts, sued an independent repair professional in Norway, worked with Amazon to get iPhone and MacBook refurbishers kicked off Amazon Marketplace, and has deals with electronics recyclers that require them to shred iPhones and MacBooks (as opposed to allowing them to be refurbished.) The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has seized iPhone replacement parts from prominent right to repair activists in the United States.
At the announcement event for the iPhone XS, Apple said that keeping your old iPhone “is the best thing for the planet,” but the fact remains that selling new iPhones is best for Apple’s bottom line. That’s why many people suspected that “throttle gate,” in which Apple was caught slowing down iPhones with old batteries, was a ploy to sell more iPhones (the phones were slowing down to prevent them from shutting off, but Apple never disclosed this to the user.) Though there’s no evidence that Apple has a business model based on planned obsolescence, the company attempted to downplay the fact that it was slowing down people’s old phones without telling them, which had the side effect of helping the company to sell more phones.
After widespread public outrage, Apple eventually offered to replace people’s old iPhone batteries for $29, which would end throttling and make older phones run faster. That program ended on December 31.
