Iran Shoots Down U.S. Military Drone in Gulf Region
June 20th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Iran has shot down a U.S. drone which the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Thursday was flying over southern Iran, raising fears that a major military confrontation could erupt between Tehran and Washington.
Guards website Sepah News said the “spy” drone was brought down over the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan, which is on the Gulf.
While Iran’s state news agency IRNA carried the same report, identifying the drone as an RQ-4 Global Hawk, a U.S. official said a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton had been shot down in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz.
Corn Prices at 5-Year High as Flooding Leaves U.S. Plantings Way Behind
June 19th, 2019Via: MarketWatch:
U.S. farmers are millions of acres behind their usual pace of corn planting this spring because of flooding, which may lead to a supply shortage that lifts prices by year end past $5 a bushel to their highest in more than five years.
Corn planted in the 18 states that account for the bulk of U.S. production was at 83% of expected plantings as of the week ended on June 9, significantly below the 99% seen a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some 8.5 million acres in the eastern Corn Belt and 6.5 million acres in the western Corn Belt remain unplanted, according to Peter Meyer, head of grain and oilseed analytics at S&P Global Platts. “By any metric, this is historically the most amount of corn acres left unplanted this late in the season,” he said.
“Amazon Could Equip Drones to Keep Watch Over Your Home”
June 19th, 2019Via: Times:
Amazon’s delivery drones could one day be fitted with an arsenal of cameras and sensors to monitor customers’ homes in between drop-offs.
The retail giant has obtained a patent for a “surveillance as a service” function for the drones, which could be fitted with thermal-imaging cameras, surveying lasers and chemical sensors to detect burglars and fires, among other threats. Amazon intends to use the drones to deliver parcels to its customers and has tested the technology in Britain, with the co-operation of the Civil Aviation Authority.
Cancer-Causing Chemical Found in Widely Used Blood Pressure Drug
June 19th, 2019Via: CNBC:
A pharmacy warned the Food and Drug Administration that it found a chemical believed to cause cancer in a widely used blood pressure medication, according to a filing from the federal agency.
Valisure, an online pharmacy company licensed in 37 states, told the FDA last week that high levels of dimethylformamide were found in valsartan, a drug produced by Swiss drugmaker Novartis and other pharmaceutical companies. The drug is used to treat hypertension in adults. The World Health Organization classifies dimethylformamide, or DMF, as a probable human carcinogen.
Valisure asked that the medication be recalled and requested that the FDA review and significantly lower the acceptable intake of DMF from its current level of 8,800,000 nanograms to less than 1,000 nanograms. The online pharmacy said it found the cancer-causing chemical in valsartan produced by five companies.
DHS to Move Biometric Data on Hundreds of Millions of People to Amazon Cloud
June 19th, 2019Via: Nextgov:
The Homeland Security Department is looking to upgrade the software it uses to analyze biometric data on hundreds of millions of people around the globe, and it plans to store that information in Amazon’s cloud.
The agency’s Office of Biometric Identification Management will replace its legacy biometric analysis platform, called the Automated Biometric Identification System, or IDENT, with a new, more robust system hosted by Amazon Web Services, according to a request for information released Monday.
IDENT essentially serves as an enterprisewide clearinghouse for troves of biometric and biographic data collected by the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service and other Homeland Security components. The system links fingerprint, iris and face data to biographic information, allowing officials to quickly identify suspected terrorists, immigration violators, criminals and anyone else included in their databases.
In total, IDENT contains information on more than 250 million people, a Homeland Security spokesperson told Nextgov.
Police Department to Deploy ‘RoboCop’ to Monitor Public Areas
June 19th, 2019Via: Fox6:
The Huntington Park Police Department is set to unveil “HP RoboCop,” the latest tool in the force’s arsenal that will keep an electronic eye on public areas, the city of Huntington Park announced in a news release.
The device is “an autonomous data machine that is meant to serve outdoors,” that will use 360-degree HD video footage to “act as an extra set of eyes and monitor areas such as parks, city buildings and corridors where police might not have the time to consistently patrol,” the release said.
The city released a video of HP RoboCop rolling down a sidewalk, making electronic sounds and at one point even saying, “Good day to you.”
Over $1 Billion Worth Of Cocaine Seized At Philadelphia Port, U.S. Attorney’s Office Says
June 18th, 2019Via: CBS:
Over $1 billion worth of cocaine was seized during a drug bust at Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in South Philadelphia on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says. Federal sources confirmed to CBS3 that a bust took place on a cargo ship that was docked at the port.
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According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, 16.5 tons of cocaine was confiscated, making it the largest drug seizure in the history of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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Two people were arrested and federally charged.
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The suspects’ identities have not been released.
Libra: The Central Bank of Facebook
June 18th, 2019This is hilariously stupid.
Via: ZeroHedge:
It won’t, however, be a cryptocurrency in the traditional sense. It won’t have a limited supply, defined inflation rate or any commodity character whatsoever.
Proof-of-work? Phsaw! Every good Friedmanite knows that opportunity cost in creating new monetary units is simply wasted capital!
Only mouth-breathing rubes stuck in the 19th century think that’s important.
Instead Libra’s supply will be regulated just like every other fiat currency, by a central authority. Facebook already wants all your data, whether you’re an account holder or not.
Now they want to control your currency as well.
More: “Facebook Will Make the Money Now”
Literal Fur Babies: The Evolution of ‘Puppy Dog Eyes’
June 17th, 2019Via: AFP:
The researchers found two muscles around the eye were routinely present and well formed in the domestic dogs, but not the wolves, and only dogs produced high-intensity eyebrow movements as they gazed at the human.
“It makes the eye look larger, which is similar to human infants,” Professor Anne Burrows of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, who was one of the co-authors, told AFP. “It triggers a nurturing response in people.”
Since the muscles were robust in the dogs but not wolves, “that tells us that that muscle and its function are selected,” she added.
The current study was led by Juliane Kaminski at the University of Portsmouth and also included researchers from Howard University in Washington and North Carolina State University.
It builds on past work, including a notable 2015 paper by a group of researchers in Japan that demonstrated that gaze exchange between humans and their pet dogs led to a mutual spike in the so-called love hormone oxytocin, similar to an effect seen between human mothers and their babies.
GPS Outage Would Cost U.S. Economy $1 Billion Per Day
June 17th, 2019Via: Ars Technica:
Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology has become widely adopted in the United States and abroad. The concept of satellite-based navigation has become so essential that other world powers, including China, Russia, the European Union, India, and Japan, have all started building their own regional or global systems.
Now, one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject has assessed the value of this GPS technology to the US economy and examined what effect a 30-day outage would have—whether it’s due to a severe space weather event or “nefarious activity by a bad actor.” The study was sponsored by the US government’s National Institutes of Standards and Technology and performed by a North Carolina-based research organization named RTI International.
