Wildfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia
January 2nd, 2020Via: Time:
Australia has deployed military planes and ships to provide aid as hundreds of wildfires rage across Australia, forcing residents to flee and destroying homes.
The Australian Defense Force is sending ships to the Victoria town of Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission and using helicopters to bring in more firefighters since roads were inaccessible, according to the Associated Press (AP).
On Tuesday, thousands of people from the town on Australia’s southeastern coast fled towards the water as a fire ripped through the area.
Taiwan Military Chief Among Eight Dead as Helicopter Makes Forced Landing
January 2nd, 2020Via: Reuters:
Taiwan’s top military official was among eight people killed on Thursday after the helicopter carrying them made a forced landing in a mountainous area near the capital Taipei, the defense ministry said.
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The chief of general staff, Air Force General Shen Yi-ming, died in the incident, while five of the 13 people aboard survived, the military said in a statement.
Exploring Ruins of Coal Fired Power Plant in Chicago
January 1st, 2020They don’t mention it in the video, but you can clearly see that this is Crawford Generating Station:
Crawford Generating Station is a decommissioned coal?fired power plant built in 1924. It is located in South Lawndale community of the West Side district, in Chicago, Illinois.
It was closed in 2012 after a long battle with the community over pollution, like the nearby Fisk Generating Station. Both stations were owned and operated by Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of Edison International. Crawford and Fisk Stations were among the last standing coal generating facilities within a major U.S. city at their time of retirement.
This has a very Lost/Escape from Tarkov aesthetic with some amount of electricity still running in the facility.
Via: Exploring With Josh:
Medical Student Tried to Smuggle Cancer Research to China
January 1st, 2020Just another day at the office.
Via: AP:
A medical student from China who U.S. authorities say tried to smuggle cancer research material taken from a Boston hospital out of the country has been held without bail by a judge who ruled he was a flight risk.
Zaosong Zheng, 29, who last year earned a visa sponsored by Harvard University to study in the U.S., appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston. He was arrested Dec. 10 at Boston’s Logan Airport on a charge of making false statements.
Magistrate Judge David Hennessy ruled that evidence suggested Zheng had tried to smuggle vials of research specimens in a sock in his suitcase bound for China and granted the prosecution’s request to hold him without bail.
Zheng stole the materials from his lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, authorities allege.
Some vials contained a colleague’s work he had replicated without the authorization or knowledge of the lab, Zheng told authorities, according to court documents. He was possibly acting on behalf of the Chinese government, the FBI said in an affidavit included in court documents.
U.S. Baghdad Embassy Attacked by Protesters Angry at Air Strikes
December 31st, 2019Via: BBC:
Protesters angered by recent US air strikes targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia have attacked the American embassy compound in Baghdad.
US troops fired tear gas to disperse a crowd that breached the outer wall of the compound, which is in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
A guard post on the street nearby was also set alight.
US President Donald Trump accused Iran of “orchestrating” the attack and said it would be “held fully responsible”.
At least 25 fighters died when the US bombed bases associated with the Kataib Hezbollah militia in western Iraq and eastern Syria on Sunday.
The US said it was retaliating for a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk on Friday that killed an American civilian contractor.
Visualising the Amount of Microplastic We Eat
December 31st, 2019Via: Reuters:
Microscopic pieces of plastic have been discovered in the most remote locations, from the depths of the ocean to Arctic ice. Another place that plastic is appearing is inside our bodies. We’re breathing microplastic, eating it and drinking plastic-infused water every day.
Plastic does not biodegrade. Instead, it breaks down into smaller pieces, and ultimately ends up everywhere, including in the food chain. Pieces that are less than five millimeters in length, around the size of a sesame seed, are called “microplastics.”
Dozens of reports have been published on microplastics but the scientific community is still only scratching the surface of understanding just how much plastic we consume and how harmful it could be.
People could be ingesting the equivalent of a credit card of plastic a week, a recent study by WWF International concluded, mainly in drinking water but also via sources like shellfish, which tend to be eaten whole so the plastic in their digestive systems is also consumed.
Deteriorating U.S. Atomic Waste Dump in Marshall Islands to be Investigated
December 30th, 2019Via: BBC:
The US Congress has demanded an investigation into a concrete dome full of nuclear waste, threatened by rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands.
Dubbed “the tomb”, it holds tonnes of radioactive debris from dozens of US atomic bomb tests carried out during the Cold War.
Congress wants the Department of Energy to report back on the state of the ageing Runit Dome within six months.
The demand is part of a huge defence bill approved by President Trump.
More than 40 nuclear weapons tests took place on or near the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific between 1946 and 1958, including a bomb test on Runit Island.
The crater from that blast was used from the 1970s by the Defense Nuclear Agency to store nuclear waste. It was later covered in thick concrete slabs to form the 377ft (115 metre) protective dome.
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The condition of the dome was highlighted in a recent Los Angeles Times investigation, which also unearthed evidence of biological weapons tests and the shipping of 130 tonnes of soil from nuclear testing grounds in Nevada to the Marshall Islands.
Social Credit on Campus: Colleges Are Turning Students’ Phones Into Surveillance Machines, Tracking the Locations of Hundreds of Thousands
December 29th, 2019Even though this is from the Washington Post (Bezos/CIA), it is a fascinating glimpse into the higher “education” ship of fools.
Via: Washington Post:
When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.”
And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.
“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.
But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilize students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.
These Are the World’s Healthiest Nations
December 29th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
Maybe it’s something in the gazpacho or paella, as Spain just surpassed Italy to become the world’s healthiest country.
That’s according to the 2019 edition of the Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index, which ranks 169 economies according to factors that contribute to overall health. Spain placed sixth in the previous gauge, published in 2017.
Four additional European nations were among the top 10 in 2019: Iceland (third place), Switzerland (fifth), Sweden (sixth) and Norway (ninth). Japan was the healthiest Asian nation, jumping three places from the 2017 survey into fourth and replacing Singapore, which dropped to eighth. Australia and Israel rounded out the top 10 at seventh and 10th place.
A Big And Bizarre Drone Mystery Is Unfolding In Rural Colorado
December 28th, 2019There are no answers yet, but here’s some more speculation.
Via: The Drive:
Based strictly on the descriptions conveyed, it sounds like someone or some group is testing a broad-area surveillance capability with lower-end autonomous drones. This could include something as simple as having a group fly a series of planned routes and return with the information gathered via autopilot. By doing so, a group of small, relatively inexpensive drones can cover a large area quickly instead of single, far more expensive assets that could take more time and offer less redundancy. Such a capability could be used for search and rescue, mapping, and general intelligence gathering. This also doesn’t require man-in-the-loop control that would necessitate line-of-sight connectivity. Still, it is really flat terrain with endless farmland in the area where the sightings occurred, which means line-of-sight connectivity could be maximized, especially with the help of a large aerial or small tower, but the grid pattern nature of these flights that the Sheriff describes point to a coordinated and automated flight plan for the drones.
The airspace where this is occurring is peculiarly desolate, as well, making it ideally suited for such a task, but the flights are not legally occurring, which makes the whole affair quite suspicious. The fact that the activity is happening after sundown is even more intriguing and adds to the notion that whoever is doing this knows it is outside the bounds of FAA regulations.
In addition, it would be very challenging to trace these aircraft back to their place of origin or point of flight termination. The drones could fly the majority of their missions with lights on and turn them off during launch and recovery. With very little ambient light, they would be all but undetectable to the naked eye. Also, remember that drones this size can takeoff from very small areas, so it’s not like a runway is needed or anything like that. As such, they can originate from nearly anywhere.
