Month: June 2017

Iran Hit 129 Degrees Yesterday, Breaking Asia’s Heat Record For June

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Iran broke the record for Asia’s highest temperature ever recorded during June yesterday. It was a scorching 128.7 degrees in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, which works out to 53.7 degrees Celsius. The previous June record in Iran was 127.4 degrees.

And if that wasn’t enough, the heat index, which factors in humidity, hit a whopping 142 degrees. Amazingly, if you only measured by heat index, the Iranian city of Bandar Mahshahr actually felt hotter than Ahvaz yesterday, hitting 165 degrees, while maintaining a lower actual temperature of 115 degrees.

As USA Today notes, the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was back in 1913 when Death Valley, California hit 134 degrees. Last year, 2016, was the hottest year on record for our planet. Meanwhile, the Trump regime is eliminating 1,200 jobs at the EPA, and the president himself has called climate change a “hoax” invented by the Chinese.

China “outraged” by $1.42 billion planned U.S. arms sales to Taiwan

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China urged the United States to revoke immediately its "wrong decision" to sell Taiwan $1.42 billion worth of arms, saying it contradicted a "consensus" President Xi Jinping reached with his counterpart, Donald Trump, in talks in April in Florida.
The sales would send a very wrong message to "Taiwan independence" forces, China's embassy in Washington said in a statement. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said on Thursday the administration had told Congress of seven proposed sales to Taiwan, the first under the Trump administration..
"The Chinese government and Chinese people have every right to be outraged," the embassy said.

Facebook gives moderators “full access” to user accounts suspected of terror links

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Big problem: Facebook and others have refused to define what "terrorism" is.


Facebook has a fleet of low-paid contractors who are tasked with investigating possible connections with terrorism on it site.
The key takeaway: Moderators are granted "full access" to any account once it's been flagged by the social network's algorithms, which are looking for details or connections that might suggest a terror link. Moderators can track track a person's location and read their private messages.
The news comes from The Guardian, just days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the social network now has two billion users.
"The counter-terrorism unit has special clearance to carry out investigations into user accounts if they are suspected of having links to terrorist groups identified by the US State Department," says the report. "Moderators will then access the individual's private messages, see who they are talking to and what they are saying, and view where they have been."

Pregnant woman charged with assault for overdosing on heroin

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A woman who overdosed on heroin while she was seven months pregnant has been charged with assault of an unborn child.

Kasey Dischman, 30, of Evans City, was arraigned Wednesday on a single count of aggravated assault on an unborn child, who was delivered a day after the overdose and is now on life support. She was unable to post the $500,000 bond and was sent to the Butler County jail.
Dischman had spent much of her pregnancy in the same jail for retail theft. She was released about five days before the June 23 overdose.
Dischman told police she injected herself with heroin she found under a couch in a home in East Butler.

Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble

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When the British left 20 years ago, Hong Kong was seen as a rare blend of East and West that China might seek to emulate. Now, increasingly, it’s a cautionary tale.

By KEITH BRADSHER 

Photographs by LAM YIK FEI
JUNE 29, 2017
When Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule two decades ago, the city was seen as a model of what China might one day become: prosperous, modern, international, with the broad protections of the rule of law.
There was anxiety about how such a place could survive in authoritarian China. But even after Beijing began encroaching on this former British colony’s freedoms, its reputation as one of the best-managed cities in Asia endured.
The trains ran on time. Crime and taxes were low. The skyline dazzled with ever taller buildings.

This popular painkiller also kills kindness

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If your job, or simply your state of mind, depends on feeling empathy for others, you might want to reconsider reaching for the Tylenol the next time you have a headache.

In research published online in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, scientists from the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University describe the results of two experiments they conducted involving more than 200 college students.

Their conclusion: Acetaminophen, the most common drug ingredient in the United States, can reduce a person's capacity to empathize with another person's pain, whether that pain is physical or emotional.

Read More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/12/this-popular-painkiller-also-kills-kindness

Florida man with criminal record marries teen exchange student, then lures and sexually assaults her 14-year-old sister

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A Florida man who had been convicted of sexual assault in the 1980s married a teen exchange student he was allowed to supervise, and then lured her 14-year-old sister to the U.S. before victimizing her, according to authorities.

Dale Leary, now 50, was allowed to become a host for young exchange students even though he was busted for sexually assaulting a woman and tying her up at gunpoint in 1985 when he was 19, according to the Miami Herald. He would later plead guilty and serve 60 days. He was on probation for 13 years, according to the newspaper.

Read More: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/florida-man-marries-teen-exchange-student-lures-sister-police-article-1.3288018

A Clean Energy’s Dirty Little Secret

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Discarded solar panels are piling up all over the world, and they represent a major threat to the environment.  Clean energy may not be so clean after all. 

A new study by Environmental Progress (EP) warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants. Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, are piling up around the world, and there’s been little done to mitigate their potential danger to the environment.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449026/solar-panel-waste-environmental-threat-clean-energy

System76 unveils its own Ubuntu-based Linux distribution called ‘Pop!_OS’

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When Canonical announced the death of the Unity desktop environment, it sent shock waves through the Linux community. After all, Ubuntu is probably the most popular Linux-based desktop operating system and switching to GNOME was changing its trajectory. With Unity, Canonical was promising Ubuntu would be an OS that could scale from smartphone to desktop with a focus on convergence, and then suddenly, it wasn't. Overnight, Ubuntu became just another desktop distro — not necessarily a bad thing.

While this hit many people hard, computer-seller System76 was probably impacted the most. The company only sells machines running Ubuntu, meaning its entire customer base would be impacted by Canonical's decision. Not content with simply following Canonical and embracing vanilla GNOME, System76 has decided to take its future into its own hands. Today, the company releases the first alpha of an all-new Linux-based operating system called "Pop!_OS," which will eventually be the only OS pre-loaded on its computers. While it will still be based on Ubuntu and GNOME, System76 is tweaking it with its own style and included drivers. In other words, the company is better controlling the user experience, and that is smart.

Read More: https://betanews.com/2017/06/29/system76-ubuntu-linux-pop_os/ 

Kentucky governor approves Bible study in public schools

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A bill signed by Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin will bring the Bible front and center in the state's public schools. Students will soon be able to learn about Jesus Christ, walking a fine line constitutionally, as the ACLU watches on. 

A ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday marked the signing of House Bill 128, which will take effect on June 30. Several other bills that made their way to the governor's desk will also go into effect on that day, according to WDRB. 

The controversial bill "allows public schools to offer an elective social studies course on the Bible that teaches Biblical content, characters, poetry and narratives and their impact on today's world,"according to a press release.