Hawaii: False Missile Alert Sent to Mobile Phones
January 13th, 2018Via: Daily Mail:
Anger is spreading in Hawaii after a Civil Defense bungle on Saturday morning, when a mistaken alert warning of an inbound ballistic missile sent thousands fleeing for shelter.
Panicked Hawaiians ran for their lives and even lowered loved ones through manhole covers after receiving the alert at 8.07am local time.
It read: ‘BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL’.
A similar message flashed up on local television networks and brought live sports games to a halt.
The false alarm was caused by a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee who ‘pushed the wrong buttons’ during a shift handover.
Incredibly, officials said the employee who made the mistake wasn’t aware of it until mobile phones in the command center began displaying the alert.
‘This guy feels bad, right. He’s not doing this on purpose – it was a mistake on his part and he feels terrible about it,’ said EMA Administrator Vern Miyagi in a press conference Saturday afternoon.
Miyagi, a retired Army major general, said the employee had been with the agency for ‘a while’ and that he would be ‘counseled and drilled so this never happens again’.
Democrats Just Handed Trump More Domestic Surveillance Powers
January 13th, 2018Mmm hmm.
Via: NBC:
Democrats have been all over the airwaves recently accusing Donald Trump of abusing the Justice Department to go after his political enemies —most notably his former opponent Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, which the Department of Justice is reportedly currently investigating based on allegation made during the 2016 presidential campaign. So you’d think they would oppose handing Donald Trump any more power with which he could potentially use against all sorts of Americans who attract negative attention from his administration.
Yet, with the help of some Democrats, the House of Representatives voted today — and the Senate will do so sometime in the next week — to extend a controversial NSA surveillance power that potentially affects millions of Americans’ privacy rights.
GM Drops the Steering Wheel and Gives Robot Driver Control
January 12th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
Next year, General Motors Co. will no longer need an engineer in the front seat babysitting the robot brain that controls its self-driving Chevrolet Bolt. The steering wheel and pedals will be gone, giving total control to the machine.
When GM starts testing its autonomous electric sedan in San Francisco ride-sharing fleets, it’ll likely be the first production-ready car on the roads without the tools to let a human assume control. The announcement Friday is the first sign from a major carmaker that engineers have enough confidence in self-driving cars to let them truly go it alone.
“What’s really special about this is if you look back 20 years from now, it’s the first car without a steering wheel and pedals,” said Kyle Vogt, chief executive officer of Cruise Automation, the San Francisco-based unit developing the software for GM’s self-driving cars.
World’s Top-Ranked Crypto Exchange Adds 240,000 Users… In One Hour
January 11th, 2018Binance (Cryptogon Affiliate Link)
Via: Bloomberg:
The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange keeps getting bigger.
Hong Kong-based Binance.com is adding “a couple of million” registered users every week, with 240,000 people signing up in just an hour on Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Zhao Changpeng said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Demand is so high that the company is limiting new customers, he said, though Binance may fully reopen in the coming weeks.
“We did not expect this kind of growth to be honest,” Zhao said from Tokyo on Thursday.
Binance was the world’s most active crypto exchange over the past 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.com, hosting $6 billion worth of digital currency trades. The most popular asset was Tron, which accounted for 11 percent of volume.
Zhao said his average customer was male and aged 25-35, though Binance is “beginning to get a lot of interest from institutional investors.”
Florida Monkeys Excreting Rare Disease that Can Kill Humans, Scientists Warn
January 10th, 2018Never Forget: Dr. Mary’s Monkey by Edward T. Haslam
Via: Guardian:
Wildlife managers in Florida say they want to remove roaming monkeys from the state in light of a new study published on Wednesday, which finds some of the animals are excreting a virus that can be dangerous to humans.
Scientists studying a growing population of rhesus macaques in Silver Springs state park say that rather than just carrying herpes B, which is common in the species, some of the monkeys have the virus in their saliva and other bodily fluids, posing a potential risk of spreading the disease.
Human cases of the virus have been rare, with about 50 documented worldwide, and there have been no known transmissions of it to people from wild rhesus macaques in Florida or elsewhere. However, the researchers say the issue has not been thoroughly studied.
The findings, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, prompted the researchers from the universities of Florida and Washington to warn Florida’s wildlife agency that the infected monkeys should be considered a public health concern.
SOUTH KOREA PREPARING TO BAN ALL CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING IN THE COUNTRY
January 10th, 2018Disclosure: I hold cryptocurrencies.
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Via: CNBC:
South Korea’s justice minister said on Thursday that a bill is being prepared to ban all cryptocurrency trading in the country.
That news is a major development for the cryptocurrency space, as South Korea is one of the biggest markets for major coins like bitcoin and ethereum.
According to industry website CryptoCompare, more than 10 percent of ethereum is traded against the South Korean won — the second largest concentration in terms of fiat currencies behind the dollar. Meanwhile, 5 percent of all bitcoin are traded against the won.
“There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and justice ministry is basically preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges,” Park Sang-ki said at a press conference, according to the ministry’s press office.
Bitcoin tumbled more than 12 percent following Park’s remarks. At 12:35 p.m. HK/SIN, the cryptocurrency traded at $13,042.79 per token.
He added that he couldn’t disclose more specific details about the proposed shutdown of cryptocurrency trading exchanges, adding that various government agencies would work together to implement several measures.
China Weighs Slowing or Halting Purchases of U.S. Treasuries
January 10th, 2018Via: Bloomberg:
China added to bond investors’ jitters on Wednesday as traders braced for what they feared could be the end of a three-decade bull market.
Senior government officials in Beijing reviewing the nation’s foreign-exchange holdings have recommended slowing or halting purchases of U.S. Treasuries, according to people familiar with the matter. The news comes as global debt markets were already selling off amid signs that central banks are starting to step back after years of bond-buying stimulus. Yields on 10-year Treasuries rose for a fifth day, touching the highest since March.
Area 51 Flights? Top-Secret Government Airline Seeks Flight Attendant
January 9th, 2018Via: USA Today:
Are you a Las Vegas-based flight attendant looking for work and able to keep a secret(s)? Do you feel positively about working for an airline that sort of doesn’t exist? Happen to have a Top-Secret clearance with the U.S. government, or think you could snag one?
If so, the perfect job just opened up.
Janet, a classified airline that runs commuter flights to some of the most secretive and closely guarded government facilities in the U.S., appears to be hiring a flight attendant. The job posting appeared recently on the website for AECOM, which operates a small fleet of aircraft out of a discreet but heavily guarded terminal at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
Very little is known about Janet, which is so secretive that the U.S. government does not admit that it exists. The planes use the call sign “Janet,” which some suggest stands for “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.”
U.S. Suspends at Least $900 Million in Security Aid to Pakistan
January 9th, 2018Hmm.
Via: Reuters:
The United States said on Thursday it was suspending at least $900 million in security assistance to Pakistan until it takes action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network militant groups.
The U.S. State Department announced the decision, saying it reflected the Trump administration’s frustration that Pakistan has not done more against the two groups that Washington says use sanctuaries in Pakistan to launch attacks in neighboring Afghanistan that have killed U.S., Afghan and other forces.
The department declined to say exactly how much aid would be suspended, saying the numbers were still being calculated and included funding from both the State and Defense departments.
Western Intervention Has Resulted in Afghanistan Becoming the World’s First True Narco-State
January 9th, 2018“How could this be possible?”
Simple. Because that’s the desired outcome.
Afghan Opium Production Rises by 61% Compared with 2010
Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on CIA Payroll
U.S.-Built Bridge is Windfall for Illegal Afghan Drug Trade
The Invisible Hand of the Market: British Troops Seize £50 Million of Afghan Opium
Officials Puzzle Over Millions of Dollars Leaving Afghanistan by Plane for Dubai
Afghans Believe U.S. is Funding Taliban
NATO Forces Supplied Food, Water and Arms to Taliban Forces in Southern Afghanistan
Blackwater Worldwide Changes Its Name to Xe; Same Mercenaries, but Now with More “Aviation Support”
$7 Billion U.S. Eradication Effort Delivers Record High Poppy Crop in Afghanistan
U.S. Funded, Trained and Equipped Afghan Air Force Running Guns and Drugs
Via: Guardian:
After fighting the longest war in its history, the US stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How could this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for more than 16 years – deploying more than 100,000 troops at the conflict’s peak, sacrificing the lives of nearly 2,300 soldiers, spending more than $1tn (£740bn) on its military operations, lavishing a record $100bn more on “nation-building”, helping fund and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies – and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect of stability in Afghanistan that, in 2016, the Obama White House cancelled a planned withdrawal of its forces, ordering more than 8,000 troops to remain in the country indefinitely.
In the American failure lies a paradox: Washington’s massive military juggernaut has been stopped in its steel tracks by a small pink flower – the opium poppy. Throughout its three decades in Afghanistan, Washington’s military operations have succeeded only when they fit reasonably comfortably into central Asia’s illicit traffic in opium – and suffered when they failed to complement it.
Research Credit: Jb
