Fishermen Express Fury as Fukushima Plant Set to Release Radioactive Material Into Ocean
July 14th, 2017Via: Telegraph:
Local residents and environmental groups have condemned a plan to release radioactive tritium from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the plant, say tritium poses little risk to human health and is quickly diluted by the ocean.
In an interview with local media, Takashi Kawamura, chairman of TEPCO, said: “The decision has already been made.” He added, however, that the utility is waiting for approval from the Japanese government before going ahead with the plan and is seeking the understanding of local residents.
Concentration Camps Reveal the Nature of the Modern State
July 14th, 2017Via: Aeon:
In the history of concentration camps, there is one thing that everyone knows: they were invented by the British. The idea of isolating unwanted population groups in purpose-built camps was implemented in South Africa in the context of the Anglo-Boer War, with horrific consequences for the Boer population. Although it would be left to the Nazis to perfect the institution, making it into one of the most recognisable in the modern world, concentration camps are the link between the Boer War and the Holocaust.
This simple narrative hides a far more complex history. Concentration camps are an institution that has changed over time, with techniques of incarceration shared and spread across the world, and of brutal ‘population management’ through terror. Above all, this is not simply a history of colonial atrocity and mad dictators; rather, it is a history that takes us to the heart of the modern state. Concentration camps reveal something about the nature of states that, in an age of heightened uncertainty and rising nationalism, should give us pause for thought.
House Democrats Want to Know Why a Major Russian Money-Laundering Case Was Abruptly Settled
July 12th, 2017Related: Why Did Loretta Lynch Grant Trump Jr’s Russian Lawyer A Special Visa To Enter America?
—
Via: Business Insider:
Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.
Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, on Tuesday tweeted an email chain from June 2016 in which he entertained accepting damaging information from a “Russian government attorney” about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s support for his father’s campaign.
That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.
“Last summer, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney in an attempt to obtain information ‘that would incriminate Hillary,'” the Democrats wrote, citing the emails he published. “Earlier this year, on May 12, 2017, the Department of Justice made an abrupt decision to settle a money laundering case being handled by that same attorney in the Southern District of New York.
“We write with some concern that the two events may be connected — and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts.”
The Prevezon case garnered high-profile attention, given its ties to a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention and spurred the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Denis Katsyv and Veselnitskaya have become the face of Moscow’s lobbying efforts against the Magnitsky Act in recent years.
Democrats now want to know whether Veselnitskaya was “involved at any point in the settlement negotiations,” and they have asked Sessions to provide the committee “with the prosecution files and any other explanatory materials related to the settlement.”
They also want to know whether there was “any contact between President Trump, White House personnel, the Trump family, or the Trump campaign with the Department of Justice” regarding Prevezon, and whether Sessions discussed the case “with anyone associated with the transition team,” or with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, while he was being considered for attorney general.
Scientists Warn Chemotherapy Could Spread Cancer, Trigger More Aggressive Tumors
July 12th, 2017Via: Free Thought Project:
Chemotherapy can increase aggressivity in cancer, causing malignant cells to migrate and triggering more dangerous tumors — thereby also increasing the disease’s fatality — researchers in the United States found.
Patients with breast cancer who opt for chemotherapy as treatment actually face a risk of metastasis, according to a new study, as Science reports,
“The blood vessels of patients receiving chemotherapy drugs have more ‘entry points’ through which cancer cells can get into the blood flow and disperse throughout the body, scientists report today in Science Translational Medicine. In mice with breast cancer, chemotherapy shrinks the primary tumor but boosts the number of cancer cells in the lungs and circulating the body.”
Although it appears chemo effectively shrinks primary tumors, the treatment ultimately triggers the spread of malignant cells, causing cancer to act aggressively and often, leading to the patient’s death.
“It is thought the toxic medication switches on a repair mechanism in the body which ultimately allows tumours to grow back stronger. It also increases the number of ‘doorways’ on blood vessels which allow cancer to spread throughout the body,” the Telegraph reports.
SolarEdge Launching First PV Inverter-Integrated Electric Vehicle Charger
July 11th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
—
There it is. Finally.
Sure, the freaks have been doing it with Arduino and duct tape for years, but it’s great to finally see a real product from a top manufacturer.
Via: SolarEdge PR:
At Intersolar North America, SolarEdge Technologies, Inc., a global leader in PV inverters, power optimizers, and module-level monitoring services, is unveiling the world’s first inverter-integrated electric vehicle (EV) charger. By supplementing grid power with PV power, SolarEdge’s Level 2 EV charger offers charging up to six times faster than a standard Level 1 charger with its innovative solar boost mode.
Tesla Starting to Build Charging Stations That Handle 40 Vehicles at Once
July 11th, 2017Via: Electrek:
Electrek has obtained the project plans of a new Supercharger station to be built in Kettleman City, California. It’s located along the highway 5 roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, where there are high concentrations of Tesla vehicles and therefore, one of the most popular routes for long distance travel.
Tesla secured the land for the project this week, which puts it on track to be among the first of the new type of large Supercharger station. There are several more at different phases of development.
This one in Kettleman City will feature 40 Supercharger stalls, which is double the number of chargers in Tesla’s current biggest stations and consequently, it should become the largest fast-charging station in the world.
Wind and Solar So Cheap the U.S. Will Meet Paris Commitments Even if Trump Withdraws
July 11th, 2017Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
—
Via: Quartz:
Research analysts at Morgan Stanley believe that renewable energy like solar and wind power are hurtling towards a level of ubiquity where not even politics can hinder them. Renewable energy is simply becoming the cheapest option, fast. Basic economics, the analysts say, suggest that the US will exceed its commitments in the Paris agreement regardless of whether or not president Donald Trump withdraws, as he’s stated he will.
“We project that by 2020, renewables will be the cheapest form of new-power generation across the globe,” with the exception of a few countries in Southeast Asia, the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report published Thursday.
“By our forecasts, in most cases favorable renewables economics rather than government policy will be the primary driver of changes to utilities’ carbon emissions levels,” they wrote. “For example, notwithstanding president Trump’s stated intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020.”
DARPA Wants Bidirectional Brain Implants, 1 Million Neuron Resolution a “Starting Point”
July 11th, 2017Via: IEEE:
DARPA is known for issuing big challenges. Still, the mission statement for its new Neural Engineering Systems Design program is a doozy: Make neural implants that can record high-fidelity signals from 1 million neurons.
Today’s best brain implants, like the experimental system that a paralyzed man used to control a robotic arm, record from just a few hundred neurons. Recording from 1 million neurons would provide a much richer signal that could be used to better control external devices such as wheelchairs, robots, and computer cursors.
What’s more, the DARPA program calls for the tech to be bidirectional; the implants must be able to not only record signals, but also to transmit computer-generated signals to the neurons. That feature would allow for neural prosthetics that provide blind people with visual information or deaf people with auditory info.
Today the agency announced the six research groups that have been awarded grants under the NESD program. In a press release, DARPA says that even the 1-million-neuron goal is just a starting point. “A million neurons represents a miniscule percentage of the 86 billion neurons in the human brain. Its deeper complexities are going to remain a mystery for some time to come,” says Phillip Alvelda, who launched the program in January. “But if we’re successful in delivering rich sensory signals directly to the brain, NESD will lay a broad foundation for new neurological therapies.”
China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs
July 11th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
China’s government has told telecommunications carriers to block individuals’ access to virtual private networks by Feb. 1, people familiar with the matter said, thereby shutting a major window to the global internet.
Beijing has ordered state-run telecommunications firms, which include China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to bar people from using VPNs, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad, the people said, asking not to be identified talking about private government directives.
The clampdown will shutter one of the main ways in which people both local and foreign still manage to access the global, unfiltered web on a daily basis. China has one of the world’s most restrictive internet regimes, tightly policed by a coterie of government regulators intent on suppressing dissent to preserve social stability. In keeping with President Xi Jinping’s “cyber sovereignty” campaign, the government now appears to be cracking down on loopholes around the Great Firewall, a system that blocks information sources from Twitter and Facebook to news websites such as the New York Times and others.
Donald Trump Jr. Hires N.Y. Lawyer for Russia Probes
July 11th, 2017Via: Time:
Donald Trump Jr. has hired a lawyer to represent him in Russia-related investigations, his office and the lawyer said on Monday, as Republicans voiced concern about a meeting between the U.S. president’s son and a Russian.
Trump Jr. hired New York lawyer Alan Futerfas, who specializes in criminal defense.
Futerfas would not say when he was retained or whether he played any part in the statements Trump Jr. made over the weekend about a meeting with a Russian lawyer.
Trump Jr. met the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in June 2016 during the presidential election campaign at Trump Tower in New York.
Trump ‘s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump ‘s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also attended, the New York Times said. It called the encounter the first confirmed private meeting of members of Donald Trump ‘s inner circle with a Russian national.
