Meet The Mad Scientists Performing Universe-Breaking Experiments…
October 4, 2019
Big things are happening at CERN... At any given time, CERN has its hands in a number of different scientific endeavors, each loftier and more high-minded than the last. One of the projects currently in the works concerns the future of Artificial Intelligence and its role in the advancement of science... Playing around with AI is nothing to be taken lightly, however, and CERN is well aware of the potential pitfalls... But AI should be the least of CERN-sceptics’ worries. In fact, AI is just the very tip of the ethical iceberg...
CIA’s top lawyer made ‘criminal referral’ on whistleblower’s complaint about Trump conduct…
October 4, 2019
Weeks before the whistleblower's complaint became public, the CIA's top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the whistleblower's allegations that President Donald Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian president, U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News. The move by the CIA's general counsel, Trump appointee Courtney Simmons Elwood, meant she and other senior officials had concluded a potential crime had been committed, raising more questions about why the Justice Department later closed the case without conducting an investigation. The phone call that Elwood considered to be a criminal referral is in addition to the referral later received as a letter from the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community regarding the whistleblower complaint.
Astronomers discover ‘cosmic pretzel’ 700 light-years away from Earth…
October 4, 2019
Astronomers have captured an incredible image of two newborn stars in the [BHB2007] 11 system described as a "cosmic pretzel," made up of a network of filaments of gas and dust. “We see two compact sources that we interpret as circumstellar disks around the two young stars,” said the study's lead author, Felipe Alves, in a statement. “The size of each of these disks is similar to the asteroid belt in our Solar System and the separation between them is 28 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.”
Volker’s secret testimony appears to quash ‘quid pro quo’ theory…
October 4, 2019
Sources familiar with Volker’s testimony Thursday said the former diplomat rejected repeated assertions by House Democrats that Trump dangled security aid in exchange for cooperation from Ukraine in investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden... Volker spent eight hours talking privately to lawmakers and staff from three committees conducting an impeachment inquiry centered on Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...
ISIS militants behind deadly 2017 Niger ambush of US troops have $5M bounties on their heads…
October 4, 2019
Abu Walid and other militants belonging to an Islamic State affiliate believed to have gunned down four American soldiers now have $5 million bounties on their heads, the U.S. State Department announced Friday, on the two-year anniversary of the attack. A pair of $5 million rewards are being offered for information leading to captures: one for Walid, the leader of ISIS in the Greater Sahara, and the other for any of the other killers involved in the ambush.
Trump says U.S. has granted Polish entry into visa waiver program…
October 4, 2019
Trump has also pledged to move 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland, with the Polish government paying to build facilities for them.
Ukraine’s Top Prosecutor Says He Will Review Case Linked To Hunter Biden…
October 4, 2019
Prosecutor general Ruslan Ryaboshapka, who was appointed in August, announced at a press conference Friday morning that he will review several cases including a criminal case that involves a natural gas company Burisma Holdings... “The key words were not Biden and not Burisma,” he said... “The key was those proceedings which were closed or investigated by the previous leadership,” Ryaboshapka said, adding, “In this large number of cases, there may be ones with these two words.”...
Here’s where the jobs are…
October 4, 2019
Lung Damage From Vaping Resembles Chemical Burns…
October 4, 2019
Doctors at the Mayo Clinic examined samples of lung tissue from 17 patients, all of which looked as if the people had been exposed to toxic chemicals, the researchers said... “All 17 of our cases show a pattern of injury in the lung that looks like a toxic chemical exposure, a toxic chemical fume exposure, or a chemical burn injury,” said Dr. Brandon T. Larsen, a surgical pathologist at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. “To be honest, they look like the kind of change you would expect to see in an unfortunate worker in an industrial accident where a big barrel of toxic chemicals spills, and that person is exposed to toxic fumes and there is a chemical burn in the airways.”. The injuries also look like those seen in people exposed to poisons like mustard gas, a chemical weapon used in World War I, he said...
Facebook Can Be Forced to Delete Content Worldwide, E.U.’s Top Court Rules…
October 4, 2019
The decision that individual countries can order Facebook to take down posts globally sets a benchmark for the reach of European laws governing the internet...
House Democrats request Ukraine documents from Pence by Oct. 15 as part of impeachment inquiry…
Read the letter...
October 4, 2019
Ukraine plane crash kills 5, injures 3 after running out of fuel…
October 4, 2019
The Ukraine Air Alliance AN-12 cargo plane, carrying seven crew members and one passenger, had taken off from Vigo, Spain shortly after midnight with plans to stop in Lviv, Ukraine, to refuel before continuing on to Istanbul. While attempting an emergency landing in Lviv, the aircraft disappeared from radar around 7:10 a.m. before crashing less than a mile off the runway at around 7:29 a.m., local reports said... The nationalities of the victims have not been identified but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said there was no initial indication that anyone on board was Spanish.
Napa Valley winemaker sentenced to 5 months in college admissions scandal…
October 4, 2019
With her decision, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani dealt more harshly with Huneeus than she did with other parents sentenced so far, but stopped well short of the 15-month sentence that federal prosecutors had said was an appropriate penalty. Lawyers for Huneeus, meanwhile, had conceded before his sentencing that the 53-year-old father of three should not avoid prison altogether, but asked Talwani for just two months behind bars. Huneeus, they said, already had been punished badly by the loss of his company and public humiliation.
Trump’s approval rating hits high for 2019 in wake of impeachment talk…
October 4, 2019
Despite the launch of impeachment proceedings, the president saw a 2-point increase from a poll a month ago, according to the new Hill-HarrisX survey released on Wednesday and taken after the impeachment inquiry was begun. That makes him just 2 points shy of his highest-ever approval rating of 51 percent last August, according to The Hill.
Scientists implant “memories” into bird brains to teach them songs they’ve never heard, using optogenetics, a technique where flashes of light are used to stimulate certain neurons in the brain, in effect, creating auditory memories that would normally be coming from outside…
Read the Journal Reference...
October 4, 2019
WAPO: Four Pinocchios: Schiff’s false claim his committee had not spoken to the whistleblower…
October 4, 2019
Microsoft says Iranian hackers targeted a 2020 presidential candidate…
October 4, 2019
The tech giant’s security and trust chief confirmed the attack in a blog post, but the company would not say which candidate was the target. The threat group, which Microsoft calls Phosphorous — also known as APT 35 — made more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. These accounts, he said, are “associated” with a presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists and prominent Iranians living outside the country... The attacks happened between August and September...
U.S. adds 136,000 jobs in September, unemployment rate hits 50-year low…
October 4, 2019
This is the slowest pace of job growth in four months, as businesses grew more cautious about hiring, but employment gains for August and July revised up by a combined 45,000. And in a separate survey, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, the lowest rate since December 1969. One dark spot in the report was that the increase in worker pay over the past 12 months fell to 2.9% from 3.2%. Average hourly earnings were little changed in September following an 11-cent gain in August.
Is Biden Done? His campaign raised $15 million in the third quarter, 1/10th of what Trump’s campaign raised…
update: Elizabeth Warren hauls in $24.6M...
October 4, 2019
Bernie Sanders raised $25 million and Pete Buttigieg raised $19.1 million in the last quarter while Kamala Harris raised $11.6 million. Elizabeth Warren has not yet released her fundraising numbers. President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee raised a total of $125 million in the third quarter...
Dutch police take down hornets’ nest of DDoS botnets from bulletproof hosting provider that harbored them…
October 4, 2019
Servers were seized, and two men were arrested yesterday at the offices of KV Solutions BV (KV hereinafter), a so-called bulletproof hosting provider, a term used to describe web hosting providers that ignore abuse reports and allow cybercrime operations to operate on their servers.
For two years, the company has provided hosting infrastructure to internet criminals, and has been one of the most serious offender at that, hosting all sorts of badies, from phishing pages to vulnerability scanners, and from crypto-mining operations to malware repositories.
But above all, the company has made a reputation in cyber-security circles for being a hotspot for DDoS botnets, with cyber-criminals renting KV servers to host their bot scanners, malware, and command-and-control (C&C) servers, knowing they'd be safe from "harm."