Pentagon Official Fired After He Mentioned Billions of Dollars in Waste and Fraud
October 2nd, 2019Via: Yahoo News:
Assad’s aggressive approach to contract negotiations, however, paid off. The Pentagon credited the career civil servant with bringing down the costs of the Apache helicopter, the C-17 transport plane and the F/A-18 fighter, saving taxpayers more than half a billion dollars. And that wasn’t all: A former senior Pentagon official said Assad had over the span of his career “saved the Department of Defense many billions of dollars.”
Trump’s interest in negotiating better prices for the government made it seem like Assad’s work would get White House attention.
Yet within two years of Trump’s entrance into the White House, Assad would find himself removed from his job, and his efforts to save money and recover hundreds of millions of dollars in potentially fraudulent spending tabled.
His treatment, he contends, was the direct result of his attempts to save the Pentagon money and identify potential contract fraud, which brought him into conflict with the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer. It was a conflict that ended dramatically, he says, when shortly after he emailed senior Pentagon officials about potential fraud, details about his travel records and his demotion were published in the press.
Assad, who is now retired, says the issues he brought up involved potentially billions of dollars in waste and fraud, and still aren’t being addressed. It’s a claim that’s backed up by multiple interviews conducted by Yahoo News with Assad and those who worked with him at the Pentagon, as well as by documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Corrupt Chinese Mayor Had Thirteen Tons of Gold and Billions in Cash in Home
October 2nd, 2019Via: Daily Mail:
A powerful Communist official in China is suspected to have received 13.5 tonnes of gold and £30 billion cash in bribes.
Thousands of golden bars and bricks were discovered at the leader’s home during a raid by corruption inspectors earlier this month.
Their value could be worth up to £520 million, according to international trading prices.
Zhang Qi, 58, who was a top official in the province of Hainan has been sacked.
In addition to the gold, inspectors discovered 268 billion yuan (£30 billion) in suspected bribes on the man’s account, according to reports.
He was also thought to have received multiple luxurious villas as perks.
If Mr Zhang’s alleged corruption turns out to be true, he would have been richer than Jack Ma, the wealthiest man in China worth $37 billion (£30 billion) according to Forbes.
This Robot Can Make 300 Pizzas In An Hour
October 2nd, 2019Via: TribLive:
Watch out pizza world: this pizza robot could shake things up.
Seattle startup Picnic announced Tuesday that it has a developed a unit that can make 300 12-inch pizzas per hour and 180 18-inch pizzas per hour.
While the pizzabot does its share of the work, dough preparation, sauce making and baking are all done by non-robots, aka humans, according to GeekWire.
Related: Yes, Robots Are Hurting Your Pay
Man Spends 30 Years Regenerating Farmland Into Amazing Forest
October 2nd, 2019Via: Happen Films:
Amazon’s Dystopian Plan To Be Anywhere And Everywhere
September 30th, 2019Via: The Week:
When most tech companies host a launch event, it is to unveil one or two major products. Not Amazon. For the past couple of years at its launch events, the company has bombarded tech watchers with a torrent of new products. And so it wasn’t all that surprising when it announced a full 15 new products at a hardware event in Seattle last week. That’s more products than most big tech companies launch all year.
But if the glut of stuff was expected, what was perhaps less predictable was the variety of what was on show: smart night lights, a smart oven, and most surprisingly of all, smart wearable devices like eyeglasses and a ring.
The sheer number of hardware products has in the past made Amazon seem a bit like it was throwing absolutely anything at the wall to see what sticks. And to be sure, there was definitely that feeling this time around. But with an increasing push to get its Alexa voice platform absolutely everywhere, Amazon’s plans finally seem to be coming into focus: The company believes voice will supplant the smartphone as the next big platform.
Artificial Blood Developed for Patients of Any Blood Type
September 30th, 2019Via: Asahi Shimbun:
Japanese researchers said they have developed artificial blood that can be transfused into patients regardless of their blood type and can vastly improve the chances for survival of seriously injured people.
The artificial blood created by a team of scientists primarily from the National Defense Medical College has proved effective in experiments on rabbits.
For possible applications on humans, the artificial blood gets around problems with identifying blood types in emergency situations and overcomes limits on storing real blood from donors.
Twitter Executive for Middle East Is British Army ‘Psyops’ Soldier
September 30th, 2019Via: Middle East Eye:
The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, Middle East Eye has established.
Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company’s UK office six years ago, has for several years also served with the 77th Brigade, a unit formed in 2015 in order to develop “non-lethal” ways of waging war.
The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”.
China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon
September 30th, 2019Via: IEEE:
The team behind a pioneering biological experiment sent to the lunar far side has released an image showing two green leaves grown on the moon.
The experiment began shortly after China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon, on 3 January this year.
Cotton, arabidopsis and potato seeds, and fruit-fly eggs and yeast were all aboard the 2.6-kilogram mini biosphere, but only the cotton produced positive results.
Image processing has now shown that two cotton leaves had grown—rather than just one as initially thought—in what was the first biological growth experiment on the moon.
China Quietly Doubles Troop Levels in Hong Kong
September 30th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Three of the envoys said the contingent of Chinese military personnel in Hong Kong had more than doubled in size since the protests began. They estimated the number of military personnel is now between 10,000 and 12,000, up from 3,000 to 5,000 in the months before the reinforcement.
As a result, the envoys believe, China has now assembled its largest-ever active force of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong.
China: Fugitive On Run for 17 Years Found Living in Cave by Drone
September 30th, 2019Via: BBC:
Chinese police have arrested a fugitive who’d been on the run for 17 years, after they used drones to spot his cave hideout.
The 63-year old, named Song Jiang by the police, had been jailed for trafficking women and children but escaped from a prison camp in 2002.
He had been living in a tiny cave cut off from human interaction for years.
Yongshan police received clues about Song’s whereabouts in early September, they said on their WeChat account.
Those clues led them to the mountains behind his hometown in Yunnan province in south-west China.
After regular searches failed to find anything, authorities sent additional drones to help the officers.
The drones eventually spotted a blue-coloured steel tile on a steep cliff as well as traces of household rubbish nearby.
Police then moved in on foot and found Song in a small cave where he’d been hiding for years.
