Virginia Roberts describes ‘having sex with Prince Andrew aged 17 in bathroom of Ghislaine Maxwell’s London townhouse…
September 20, 2019
New York Mayor de Blasio ends 2020 presidential bid…
September 20, 2019
De Blasio announced his exit, which leaves 19 Democrats vying to be the party’s nominee, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show.
Beto O’Rourke does an AMA on Reddit and is asked how he plans to confiscate all AR-15s from Americans. Goes about as well as expected…
September 20, 2019
The amount of downvotes he's received is astounding. Beta literally answered questions for 30 mins and then ran away with pitchforks and torches behind him. Reading through the thread you will come to the conclusion that if users from a very hard left-leaning platform like this responded the way they did, the consensus is Americans aren't voluntarily giving up anything.
Edward Snowden Speaks Out: ‘I Haven’t And I Won’t’ Cooperate With Russia…
September 20, 2019
Deep learning application able to predict El Niño events up to 18 months in advance…
September 20, 2019
They report that their system was more accurate than current weather models, correctly identifying 24 out of 34 events, compared to only 20 of the same events identified by conventional modeling. The system was also able to do so 18 months in advance. The researchers also report that their system was able to recognize other events that are believed to lead to El Niño events, such as an Indian Ocean dipole...
Tennessee woman blames nail salon after almost losing arm from flesh-eating bacteria…
September 20, 2019
Jayne Sharp told Knoxville’s WBIR-TV she’s undergone several surgeries to remove large chunks of tissue in one of her hands that was destroyed due to the infection... "While I was there I got stuck on my thumb and I went 'ouch' but I went back to looking at my telephone," she told the station. Her thumb began to throb and she fell so ill that she had trouble sleeping that night... Sharp went to Summit Medical Group the next day to be checked for the flu. When the flu test came back negative, nurse practitioner Nikki Brown drew a line around a spot on Sharp’s thumb that showed an unusual amount of swelling. Brown told her to monitor the spot in case the swelling got worse. Brown ordered Sharp to go to the emergency room the next day after being told over the phone that the swelling had spread up her right arm.
US-China trade talks head into a second day…
September 20, 2019
U.S. and Chinese officials are meeting in Washington for a second day to prepare trade negotiations next month... But expectations have remained modest, with both sides indicating there is little too maneuver on the key sticking points over Beijing's industrial and technology policies. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the Fox Business Network on Thursday, that it remained unclear what China wanted and that "we will find out very, very shortly in the next couple of weeks." "What we need is to correct the big imbalances, not just the current trade deficit," Ross said. "It's more complicated than just buying a few more soybeans."
Senate tech critic challenges Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Sell WhatsApp, Instagram…
September 20, 2019
It may have been more than Zuckerberg expected from his private meeting with Sen. Josh Hawley, a conservative Republican from Missouri, in his Capitol Hill office... Rather than moving users' personal data from properties such as WhatsApp and Instagram to the core Facebook platform, the company should put a wall around the services or, better yet, sell them off, Hawley said he told Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, who requested the meeting, "did not think that was a great idea," he said. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.
Prosecutors discuss charges against Democratic donor Ed Buck…
September 20, 2019
Justice Neil Gorsuch is firing back at the critics of his judicial philosophy, some of whom sit alongside him on the Supreme Court, who believe the Constitution should be interpreted differently in the modern era…
Justice Gorsuch's call on the people to keep the republic...
September 20, 2019
"When that happens, your rights get diminished and the Constitution gets amended in ways you never agreed to," he told the Washington Examiner during an interview in his chambers at the Supreme Court, which once belonged to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch, like Scalia before him, believes the Constitution should be interpreted as to its text and original public meaning and argues the originalist approach ensures the rights of the American people are not lost and that unfounded changes are not made.
He added: "Your rights get lost when you depart from the original meaning. And then sometimes, wait, it gets worse. Not only does it take stuff away, it puts stuff in there that isn't."
[...]
“Our job is to make sure this amazing Constitution and the laws that other people have adopted, not us, they’re not ours, we’re just custodians,” he said. “We’re keepers of that.”...Snippet from the second article:
Like his Supreme Court decisions, Gorsuch's book is cogent and capable of being understood by those without his legal pedigree. He details rulings with the recurring annotation implied: "a judge is supposed to listen courteously and rule impartially," a fact he noted during his confirmation hearing. The takeaway from his book includes an abundance of factual knowledge, but almost more importantly a convincing case that the judiciary must protect the law as written, while it's up to the people to participate in the political system to protect the law itself. It's a lesson that should be obvious, but just as the founders understood the fragility of a republic, Gorsuch knew to put down his lesson in self-governance in writing...
President Trump Participates in a Joint Press Availability with the Prime Minister of Australia…
September 20, 2019
The F.B.I. has used secret subpoenas to obtain personal data from far more companies than previously disclosed, newly released documents show…
September 20, 2019
The requests, which the F.B.I. says are critical to its counterterrorism efforts, have raised privacy concerns for years but have been associated mainly with tech companies. Now, records show how far beyond Silicon Valley the practice extends — encompassing scores of banks, credit agencies, cellphone carriers and even universities. The demands can scoop up a variety of information, including usernames, locations, IP addresses and records of purchases. They don’t require a judge’s approval and usually come with a gag order, leaving them shrouded in secrecy...
The documents, obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and shared with The New York Times, shed light on the scope of the demands — more than 120 companies and other entities were included in the filing... The documents provide information on about 750 of the subpoenas — representing a small but telling fraction of the half-million issued since 2001, when the Patriot Act expanded their powers.
Hundreds of Chinese goods exempted from Trump’s tariffs…
September 20, 2019
The Trump administration has excluded Christmas tree lights, a series of pet supplies, plastic drinking straws and hundreds of other products from a 25 percent duty President Donald Trump imposed on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, according to three notices set to be published in the Federal Register on Friday.
Caribbean Islands Are The Biggest Plastic Polluters Per Capita In The World…
September 20, 2019
In 2015, the Journal of Science surveyed 192 coastal countries and confirmed that Asian nations, most notably China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, were 13 of the 20 biggest contributors of marine plastic waste. But as is often the case, numbers alone do not tell the entire story. Case in point: the little island of St. Lucia, which produces the 6th largest amount of plastic waste per capita in the Caribbean, generates more than four times the amount of plastic waste per person as China— the world’s largest plastic polluter in absolute terms— and is responsible for 1.2 times more improperly disposed plastic waste per capita than China.
Of the top thirty global polluters per capita, ten are from the Caribbean region. These are Trinidad & Tobago, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, Guyana, Barbados, St. Lucia, Bahamas, Grenada, Anguilla and Aruba; and every year, these ten island nations generate more plastic debris than the weight of 20,000 space shuttles.The End of Aging? Harvard’s genetics genius says we can live past 120 with supplements and lifestyle tweaks…
September 20, 2019
...enzymes called sirtuins can boost the strength of cells so much that they stop skipping the groove. And that you can activate sirtuins with a “helper molecule” called NAD... NMN, derived from the B vitamin niacin, is not the world’s cheapest supplement, but it’s hardly out of reach... There’s been an explosion of research in the last few years showing that NMN (and its chemical cousin NR) may be a fountain of youth... NMN isn’t the only supplement Sinclair takes or recommends. There’s also resveratrol, a compound found in red wine.
[...]
There are other brand new drugs in the works, many of which Sinclair can’t talk about, that he says “will make what we have today look like doctors using leeches.” But he does predict that within the next few decades, doctors will start injecting us with a benign designer virus that can literally reprogram our genome to be young again. You'd take a course of injections around age 30, then when you start to feel the effects of aging in your mid-40s, a course of antibiotics will wake the virus up.That would turn on genes that would literally turn the clock back on your body -- un-graying hair, removing wrinkles, even regenerating organs. "Like Benjamin Button, you would feel 35 again, then 30, then 25," Sinclair writes. At that point, you take a second antibiotic to turn off the fountain of youth lest it reverse aging too far.
"Does that sound like science fiction?" asks Sinclair...
Using CRISPR, researchers in the U.S. have engineered a plasmid that removes antibiotic resistance-gene from bacterium…
September 20, 2019
This breakthrough could lead to new methods for fighting antibiotic resistance... In vitro, and in mouse models, the engineered plasmid removed the antibiotic resistance gene from E. faecalis. This microorganism is now resistant to many commonly-used antibiotics and causes life-threatening infections, especially in hospital environments. In mouse models, the plasmid reduced the abundance of the resistance gene threefold...
Stage set in Nevada as Earthlings arrive for Area 51 events…
Update: Only around 100 people showed up after more than 2 million said they would attend...
Update 2: 1 person arrested...
September 20, 2019
The music kicked off weekend events — inspired by an internet hoax to “see them aliens” — that Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said had drawn perhaps 1,500 people to two tiny desert towns.
The Air Force has issued stern warnings for people not to try to enter the Nevada Test and Training Range, where Area 51 is located. Lee said no arrests were made. “It’s public land,” the sheriff said. “They’re allowed to go to the gate, as long as they don’t cross the boundary.” Authorities reported no serious incidents related to festivals scheduled until Sunday in Rachel and Hiko, the two towns closest to Area 51...
One dead, five hurt in Washington, D.C. shooting…
September 20, 2019
One person was killed and five others wounded on Thursday in a shooting on the streets of Washington, D.C., not far from the White House, police said. Police have not apprehended a suspect as of late Thursday and do not know the motive for the shooting, said Metropolitan Police commander Stuart Emerman. He said it is not an active shooting situation. Detectives are interviewing witnesses and looking for camera footage,” Emerman said.
NASA couldn’t find India’s crashed Moon lander, and hope is fading fast
September 20, 2019
It’s now been nearly two full weeks since India’s lunar lander, Chandrayaan-2, went quiet moments before what was supposed to be a soft landing on the Moon. Rather than gracefully gliding to a halt, the spacecraft crashed, and its handlers back on Earth haven’t been able to establish contact since.
Last week, NASA said it would do its best to help by targeting the suspected crash site with its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It was thought that if the LRO could capture a clear image of the downed spacecraft it might provide some additional information and help the India Space Research Organization decide how to proceed. Unfortunately, the LRO’s powerful camera just couldn’t spot the lander, and hope of salvaging the mission is fading rapidly.