Technology’s advance is bringing us closer to the uncomfortable point at which organic and mechanical life begins to merge. That’s really what the growing ethical, legal, and practical conflicts in science boil down to.
On Friday, a Chinese official declared to the United Nations General Assembly that it was “highly necessary and pressing for the international community to jointly bring about an international code of conduct on cyberspace at an early date.”
The Dutch Safety Board has published a report on the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, concluding that the plane was brought down last July by a missile launched from eastern Ukraine.
The Associated Press is exposing the security flaws in Hillary Clinton’s email setup, and it’s devastating. Some of the details they amassed have been known or suspected since early in the scandal, but seeing them all together, with some new details, paints a picture of hair-raising reckless vulnerability.
During his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, President Obama said Russia’s airstrikes in Syria came as no surprise. He was vague on exactly what American intelligence knew.
The quiet coda to last month’s Category 5 Internet freak-out arrives via Reuters, which reports no charges will be filed against Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer in the death of Zimbabwe’s most famous resident, Cecil the Lion.
Everyone is fixated on the “climate change” part of Barack Obama’s ridiculous thoughts on the nature of “leadership” during his bizarre 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, but the really terrifying part of his answer is what he thinks does not qualify as leadership. He’s exactly wrong, and it’s the reason Vladimir Putin has been able to hoist this lightweight President up by his trousers and throw him face-first out of the Middle East.
The Iranian government has convicted hostage American reporter Jason Rezaian of “espionage” in an outrageous secret trial.
On Sunday, the Iraqi air force claimed it was able to target the convoy of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with an air strike. The status of the self-proclaimed “caliph” is unknown.
Company co-founder Jack Dorsey, recently installed as CEO, has promised “big changes” for Twitter, and “has been vocal about the need to shake things up at the company, as user growth and engagement has stalled and the company’s stock has been battered,” according to Business Insider. Dorsey described the company’s flagging performance as “unacceptable” and promised to “ensure more disciplined execution” in a June conference call.
The practice of “beading,” or “promising girls to their male relatives for sex,” is supposed to be illegal in Kenya, but it still occurs in tribal areas, according to a 13-year-old girl named Younis who was married off to a 78-year-old man when she was only 9 years old.
One would not normally think of Iran as a leader in trans-gendered progressive ideology, but when officials began poking around beneath the Islamic head scarves and long-sleeved jerseys worn by players on the Iranian women’s soccer team, they were surprised to discover that most of the players were – to use the hetero-normative language of the obsolete patriarchy – men.
The problem is that the Republican leadership betrayed their own base one time too many. What happened in 2014 was quite simple: the GOP asked voters to give them both House and Senate to put the brakes on Obama’s disastrous agenda, and the voters took them up on it. The capitulations and walkbacks began with days of the last races being called. The old song-and-dance about how “we’ll fight next time” and “we need just a little more power to get anything done” was performed one last time, to disastrous effect.
The turmoil over selecting a Speaker of the House to replace John Boehner seems positively tranquil compared to the debate over Serbian relations in the parliament of Kosovo. Someone decided to filibuster these talks by throwing tear gas grenades in the middle of a parliamentary session, causing two MPs to pass out
On Thursday, Bangladesh celebrated the extraordinary rat-slaying achievements of 55-year-old farmer Abdul Khaleq Mirbohor, who took national honors plus a cash prize valued at $250 USD, for leading a team of mostly female volunteers in the killing of some 160,000 rats.
With astonishing speed, American influence—withered by years of Barack Obama’s indecisiveness—is fading, as Iraq realigns around Russia and Iran. Take it from the Iraqis, who are celebrating the arrival of “Putin the Shiite” in Syria, hoping he’ll swing into Iraq to pick up the fight against ISIS.
The title given to Michael Isikoff’s piece is “Benghazi Committee, Under Fire, Releases More Clinton Emails,” but the big news is right up front, in the first few paragraphs: Hillary Clinton carelessly exposed a top CIA human intelligence asset in Libya, in an email sent through her unsecure private mail server.
The Islamic State has released a videotaped execution of three Assyrian Christian hostages, captured during a February offensive in Syria. The lives of hundreds more Christian captives remain in the balance, a point the savages emphasized by making three of them beg for ransom payments on camera.
The latest in a string of ISIS videos to feature child soldiers features a boy, about ten years of age, brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade and threatening to behead President Obama unless the United States submits to the Islamic State.
AFP reports that Turkish police have busted six suspected ISIS militants for attempting to illegally mint coins. It seems like one of the more bizarre crimes to emerge from the Islamic State chamber of horrors, but the report notes that ISIS has long been interested in creating its own currency to achieve a measure of independence from what it describes as “the satanic global financial system.”
In Saudi Arabia, a group calling itself “Cyber of Emotion” declared online warfare against ISIS supporters in the Kingdom last month, and claims to have identified several of them by hacking into their email accounts. According to group’s leader, most ISIS supporters in Saudi Arabia are women who are involved in romantic relationships with the jihadis.
According to a study of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, conducted by the Cato Institute, compensation for federal workers is 78% higher on average than compensation for private sector employees.
“Federal civilian workers had an average wage of $84,153 in 2014, compared to an average in the private sector of $56,350,” according to the Cato review. “The federal advantage in overall compensation (wages plus benefits) is even greater. Federal compensation averaged $119,934 in 2014, which was 78 percent higher than the private-sector average of $67,246.”
Details are still trickling out about the incident, but the good news is that Spencer Stone, the United States airman who teamed up with two friends to tackle a jihadi gunman on a train bound for Paris in August, is reportedly in stable condition after suffering multiple stab wounds in Sacramento.
“With the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, yesterday, Tuesday, October 6, Datto delivered a hardware device to the FBI containing all backed up data related to Platte Rivers Networks’ client known to be in its possession,” said the company. The “end user” would presumably be either Hillary Clinton or an entity under her control, such as the “Clinton Executive Service Corporation,” which pops up in many stories about how Platte River Networks was contracted to take care of the email server.
Not only has Datto surrendered equipment to the FBI, but they’ve also stated that they warned Hillary Clinton’s computer company, Platte River Networks, that her server was vulnerable to hackers… and they say their warnings were disregarded, because FBI investigators ordered that the system should not be altered in any way.
