Deadly Attack on Hotel in Tunisia
June 26th, 2015Via: Guardian:
At least 27 people have been killed in a gun attack on a beach in front of hotels in the Tunisian resort of Sousse.
Witnesses reported that gunmen opened fire on the beach between the Soviva and Imperial Marhaba hotels. Tunisia’s interior ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui told the state news agency the victims were mostly tourists but did not give any nationalities.
A security source at the scene said the body of one attacker, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, lay where police had shot him dead. There were reports that one other assailant was on the run.
The attack in Tunisia came on the same day that a man was decapitated and several others injured in an attack with apparent Islamist connections at a factory in France.
Man Decapitated in France by Attacker Who Tried to Blow Up Factory
June 26th, 2015Via: Independent:
A man has reportedly been decapitated by suspected Isis supporters at a factory in France.
The murdered man’s head was found attached to a wire mesh fence surrounded by two black flags linked to the terrorist group near the entrance to the Air Products factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, police said.
According to Le Parisien newspaper, the man’s face was covered in Arabic writing and there was speculation that he may have been murdered elsewhere and the body then taken to Air Products for the gruesome display.
California Lawmakers Approve Strict Vaccination Requirement
June 25th, 2015Via: Los Angeles Times:
California lawmakers on Thursday approved one of the toughest mandatory vaccination requirements in the nation, moving to end exemptions from state immunization laws based on religious or other personal beliefs.
The measure, among the most controversial taken up by the Legislature this year, would require more children who enter day care and school to be vaccinated against diseases including measles and whooping cough.
Those with medical conditions such as allergies and immune-system deficiencies, confirmed by a physician, would be excused from immunization. And parents could still decline to vaccinate children who attend private home-based schools or public independent studies off campus.
U.S. Senate Approves Fast-Track TPP Trade Bill
June 25th, 2015So it goes…
Via: Stuff:
US lawmakers approved legislation key to securing a hallmark Pacific trade deal by a comfortable margin on Wednesday, advancing President Barack Obama’s efforts to strengthen US economic ties with Asia.
Senators voted 60 to 38 to approve legislation to streamline Congress’s consideration of trade deals, including Obama’s 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) of which New Zealand is part.
Final passage could push the 12-nation TPP, a central part of Obama’s foreign policy pivot to Asia, over the finish line and also boost hopes that an ambitious trade deal with the European Union could soon be completed.
The bill now goes to Obama to be signed into law.
More: Here’s How Much Corporations Paid U.S. Senators to Fast-Track the TPP Bill
Processed Food Losing Market Share to Fresh and Organic Alternatives
June 24th, 2015With regard to “organic,” watch out: Who Owns Organic Brands And Why You Should Care.
Via: Fortune:
Major packaged-food companies lost $4 billion in market share alone last year, as shoppers swerved to fresh and organic alternatives. Can the supermarket giants win you back?
Try this simple test. Say the following out loud: Artificial colors and flavors. Pesticides. Preservatives. High-fructose corn syrup. Growth hormones. Antibiotics. Gluten. Genetically modified organisms.
If any one of these terms raised a hair on the back of your neck, left a sour taste in your mouth, or made your lips purse with disdain, you are part of Big Food’s multibillion-dollar problem. In fact, you may even belong to a growing consumer class that has some of the world’s biggest and best-known companies scrambling to change their businesses.
Lest you think this is hyperbole, consider the commentary in February at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference, the packaged-goods industry’s premier annual gathering.
“We look at our business and say, ‘How can we remake ourselves?’ ” said Richard Smucker, CEO of his family’s namesake jelly giant. A second exec—this one at ConAgra, which owns 29 food brands that bring in $100 million in annual retail sales apiece—bemoaned to Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow that “big” had become “bad.” A third conveyed what her industry feared would be the largest casualty of the public’s “mounting distrust of Big Food”—that shoppers would turn away from them for good. “We understand that increasing numbers of consumers are seeking authentic, genuine food experiences,” said Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison, “and we know that they are skeptical of the ability of large, long-established food companies to deliver them.”
And here’s one number to capture that skepticism: An analysis by Moskow found that the top 25 U.S. food and beverage companies have lost an equivalent of $18 billion in market share since 2009. “I would think of them like melting icebergs,” he says. “Every year they become a little less relevant.”
China’s Troubling Robot Revolution
June 24th, 2015Via: New York Times:
OVER the last decade, China has become, in the eyes of much of the world, a job-eating monster, consuming entire industries with its seemingly limitless supply of low-wage workers. But the reality is that China is now shifting its appetite to robots, a transition that will have significant consequences for China’s economy — and the world’s.
In 2014, Chinese factories accounted for about a quarter of the global ranks of industrial robots — a 54 percent increase over 2013. According to the International Federation of Robotics, it will have more installed manufacturing robots than any other country by 2017.
Midea, a leading manufacturer of home appliances in the heavily industrialized province of Guangdong, plans to replace 6,000 workers in its residential air-conditioning division, about a fifth of the work force, with automation by the end of the year. Foxconn, which makes consumer electronics for Apple and other companies, plans to automate about 70 percent of factory work within three years, and already has a fully robotic factory in Chengdu.
Chinese factory jobs may thus be poised to evaporate at an even faster pace than has been the case in the United States and other developed countries. That may make it significantly more difficult for China to address one of its paramount economic challenges: the need to rebalance its economy so that domestic consumption plays a far more significant role than is currently the case.
Why the Saudis Are Going Solar
June 23rd, 2015Disclosures: I sell solar power systems in NZ. I’m long Enphase Energy.
—
Via: The Atlantic:
Prince Turki bin Saud bin Mohammad Al Saud belongs to the family that rules Saudi Arabia. He wears a white thawb and ghutra, the traditional robe and headdress of Arab men, and he has a cavernous office hung with portraits of three Saudi royals. When I visited him in Riyadh this spring, a waiter poured tea and subordinates took notes as Turki spoke. Everything about the man seemed to suggest Western notions of a complacent functionary in a complacent, oil-rich kingdom.
But Turki doesn’t fit the stereotype, and neither does his country. Quietly, the prince is helping Saudi Arabia—the quintessential petrostate—prepare to make what could be one of the world’s biggest investments in solar power.
Near Riyadh, the government is preparing to build a commercial-scale solar-panel factory. On the Persian Gulf coast, another factory is about to begin producing large quantities of polysilicon, a material used to make solar cells. And next year, the two state-owned companies that control the energy sector—Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, and the Saudi Electricity Company, the kingdom’s main power producer—plan to jointly break ground on about 10 solar projects around the country.
Google Eavesdropping Tool Installed on Computers Without Permission
June 23rd, 2015Via: Guardian:
Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.
First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.
It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.
“Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room,” said Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party founder, in a blog post. “Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by … an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.”
The feature is installed by default as part of Google’s Chrome browser. But open source advocates are up in arms about it also being installed with the open source variant Chromium, because the listening code is considered to be “black box”, not part of the open source audit process.
“We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does,” said Falkvinge.
The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever
June 23rd, 2015Disclosures: I sell solar power systems in NZ. I’m long Enphase Energy.
—
Via: Bloomberg:
Solar Prices Keep Crashing
The price of solar power will continue to fall, until it becomes the cheapest form of power in a rapidly expanding number of national markets. By 2026, utility-scale solar will be competitive for the majority of the world, according to BNEF. The lifetime cost of a photovoltaic solar-power plant will drop by almost half over the next 25 years, even as the prices of fossil fuels creep higher.
Solar power will eventually get so cheap that it will outcompete new fossil-fuel plants and even start to supplant some existing coal and gas plants, potentially stranding billions in fossil-fuel infrastructure. The industrial age was built on coal. The next 25 years will be the end of its dominance.
Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research
June 23rd, 2015via: First Look:
The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counterterrorism operations.
Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud and financial scams.
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online.
