July 25th, 2019

The antivirus software pioneer has been on the run since 2012 after his alleged involvement in a murder in Belize, which he denies. Data hidden across the world by the 2020 presidential candidate and maker of an "unhackable" cryptocurrency wallet would have been revealed if he remained detained, the series of tweets this week said...

Leaving detention (don't judge my looks - four days of confinement). I was well treated. My superiors were friendly and helpful. In spite of the helpful circumstances, we've decided to move on. More later. pic.twitter.com/V4539uYCHR

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 24, 2019

The two analysts suggest that the job market is not as stable as the government claims. Total job losses represent 3.4 per cent of total employment in the industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing and public utilities, and 0.7 per cent of total national employment.

CICC’s research did not factor in the effect of tariff increases of 10 to 25 per cent on US0 billion of Chinese imports, which came into force in May. That omission suggests that job losses will continue to grow.

The rock, called Asteroid 2019 OK, sped by our planet at 11.22am on Thursday, passing within about 70,000 kilometres – which is a long way away but closer to us than the moon’s orbit. Due to the trajectory of the asteroid – flying towards us from the direction of the sun – astronomers had no warning it was headed our way.

It is the largest rock to fly at such close quarters to the Earth this year, and possibly for many years.
[...]
"[If it hit Earth] it makes the bang of a very large nuclear weapon – a very large one."

How big?

"It would have hit with over 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima," says Swinburne University astronomer Associate Professor Alan Duffy...

Participants will jointly plan and design the station, coordinate their implementation of the plan and ultimately share the scientific results, Wu said at an international conference on the exploration of the Moon and the deep space that opened Monday in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, Guangdong Province...

Yep, just China, Russia, and the EU sharing technology. Nothing to see here.

So less than 20km a week or extra charge? seems like they want you to pay a premium for something that is really more a proof of concept than something useful.

The Justice Department plans to approve the T-Mobile/Sprint merger as part of a settlement involving the sale of spectrum licenses, wholesale access, and a prepaid wireless business to Dish Network, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

"The companies have spent weeks negotiating with antitrust enforcers and each other over the sale of assets to Dish to satisfy concerns that the more than $26 billion merger of the No. 3 and No. 4 wireless carriers by subscribers would hurt competition," the Journal wrote, citing people familiar with the matter.

As a result of those negotiations, the DOJ is "poised to approve" the merger and could announce a settlement with T-Mobile and Sprint "as soon as this week, but the timing remains uncertain," the Journal wrote...

First U.S. Embassy personnel in Cuba heard a noise, then they became dizzy and had trouble concentrating. The State Department described the event as a sonic attack, but conflicting evidence surrounding Havana Syndrome has led others to question this conclusion – and the results of brain imaging released Tuesday only deepen the mystery. Research published Tuesday by the American Medical Association retroactively combs through brain scans obtained during treatment in an attempt to describe the neurological impact – if anything happened at all.
[...]
Researchers compared MRI scans... looking for potential markers from “exposure to uncharacterized directional phenomena of unknown etiology, manifesting as pressure, vibration or sound”... Compared to healthy controls, researchers observed “significant differences in whole brain white matter volume, regional gray and white matter volumes, cerebellar tissue micro structural integrity, and functional connectivity in the auditory and visuo spatial subnetworks but not in the executive control subnetwork,” according to the study.
[...]
The brain scans did not look like the conventional images of traumatic brain injury or stroke, nor did they “form an anatomical basis for a specific behavioral dysfunction observed in other brain disorders,” the researchers said... In their conclusion, researchers neither confirm nor deny directed energy weapons had been used except to the say that the phenomena is worth further study.

It’s gotten to the point where the tech giants know more about you than the government does. Take it from Yael Eisenstat, who served as a CIA officer, a diplomat in East Africa, and an adviser to Vice President Biden before joining Facebook in 2018 to tackle its election meddling problem. “I get to make this joke—not everyone does, having been in both places—but Facebook knows you better than the CIA ever will,” she says. “Facebook knows more about you than you know about yourself.”... "I think the more that human beings start to realize they're being manipulated, the more this relationship is going to come under pressure"...

In reality, Facebook is the corporate front for alphabet agencies.

Video footage posted on social media shows the altercation. The rapper says he was acting in self defense, claiming two men harassed and followed his entourage. On Thursday morning the Swedish prosecutor's office said the rapper was charged with aggravated assault and is to remain in custody pending trial, Sky News reported...

...The rules Democrats will use to select the nominee in Milwaukee next July are favorable to Biden. Candidates cannot win pledged delegates from a state unless they reach 15% support. Apart from Biden, only Warren, Harris, Sanders and Pete Buttigieg appear currently in position to hit that threshold right now, and Biden has the moderate lane mostly to himself. Even then, the states will divvy up the delegates proportionally. Biden’s deep ties throughout the party would come in handy in a long battle.

But that remains a long way off, and in the early rounds of the fight, Biden has not inspired much enthusiasm. On the same day Biden met with those 200 voters in Dover, Buttigieg beat him to town by a few hours. Awaiting Buttigieg a 10-minute stroll across the river? Almost 900 people...

Mr Rossello had insulted women and mocked constituents, including victims of Hurricane Maria. He had called a female politician a “whore”, referred to another as a “daughter of a b****”, and made fun of an obese man with whom he posed in a photo. He had joked about the murder of the mayor of Puerto Rican capital San Juan and had also made homophobic remarks about others... On Wednesday evening a crowd of thousands outside the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan erupted into cheers and singing after Mr Rossello posted a video announcement on Facebook just before midnight.

Spiritual guru and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson clarified on Twitter Tuesday that she is not “a cult leader” and claimed she does not question vaccine science.... Williamson, who was once hailed as a “spiritual legend” by Gwyneth Paltrow, garnered national headlines after she delivered passionate but rambling responses during the first 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate.

I am not a cult leader. I am not anti-science (that one is almost funny, given how much I quote Einstein). And I am not an anti-vaxxer. Hoping that if I repeat it 3 to 4 times a day I might penetrate the field of lies created to keep some people out of the conversation.

— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) July 23, 2019

Mr Walgamott, who is from Utah, said when he shook his wife by the hand the sensation in the fingers was similar to that of an able-bodied person.
[...]
The prosthetic hand and fingers are controlled by electrodes implanted in the patient’s muscles...The sense of touch apparently means users can distinguish between different surfaces. This is because they “feel” objects via sensors in the hand that feed impulses to the nerves in his arm... The hand, which moves with the person’s thoughts, acts as a “closed loop”, meaning it also prevents phantom pain – a common phenomenon in which amputees imagine the injured limb is still there.

The medals were designed by Junichi Kawanishi, who won a competition that drew entries from more than 400 professional designers and design students.

The medals are all 85mm in diameter, measuring 7.7mm at their thinnest part and 12.1mm at their thickest. The gold medals use more than 6 grams of gold plating on pure silver, the silver medals are made from pure silver, and the bronze medals use a red brass alloy made up of 95-percent copper and 5-percent zinc. IOC regulations mandated that the design should include the iconic five rings symbol, the official name of the games, and the Greek goddess of victory Nike in front of the Panatheniac stadium.
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The Tokyo 2020 organizing committee launched a two-year campaign in April 2017 to collect donated electronic devices from members of the public in order to harvest the necessary metals. 78,895 tons of gadgets were received in total, including 6.21 million mobile phones, and this resulted in the extraction of 32kg of gold, 3,500kg of silver, and 2,200kg of bronze...

“The game plan we've been using up to this point is no longer effective,” Wheeler told Oregon's FOX 12 about the violence on the streets... Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner released a statement following the violent protest, blaming Wheeler for lack of enforcement and saying the mayor must “remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement action”... But Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner as part of the mayor’s office, denies he was responsible for lack of policing at the protest. “I thought it was beneath a United States senator,” Wheeler told the outlet. “The truth is, I wasn't even here. I wasn't even in the United States. I was with my family in Ecuador on a wildlife tour.”

Two Republicans and one independent were the only holdouts Wednesday as the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act by a nearly unanimous vote.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, prescribes strict regulations around the use of automatic telephone dialing systems or other artificial or prerecorded messages. The bill specifically requires any entity making robocalls to first obtain the consent of those being called. The bill also requires the creation of reliable mechanisms whereby consumers can withdraw their consent...

The rule, implemented last Monday, requires asylum seekers to first apply for protection in the country they travel through to reach the United States. For most Central American migrants, that country is Mexico.

A day after it went into effect, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint in a federal California court on behalf of four civil rights organizations seeking an injunction against the rule, arguing it is the Trump administration's latest attempt to "significantly undermine, if not virtually repeal, the U.S. asylum system at the southern border." Late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, a President Barack Obama appointee, ordered a preliminary injunction against the rule, stating that it was likely invalid as it is inconsistent with existing asylum laws.