Bost 7 News

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Polls close in Albania municipal election boycotted by opposition

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Opposition leaders had threatened to interfere with the polls they boycotted as part of the anti-government protests.

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Explosion hits Afghan capital Kabul: Media reports

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Afghan capital rocked by a powerful blast with smoke seen billowing near US Embassy, according to media reports.

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'Amazing event': North Korea lauds Trump-Kim meeting at border

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Extensive coverage of impromptu meeting in North Korea's state media, but analysts question significance of the event.

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Alcohol causes significant harm to those other than the drinker

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Each year, one in five US adults -- an estimated 53 million people -- experience harm because of someone else's drinking, according to new research in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

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Cricket World Cup: England beat India to revive semifinal hopes

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

England ended India's unbeaten run in the Cricket World Cup to boost their semi-final prospects.

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Firms violating non-accounting securities laws more likely to breach GAAP

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

New research published in the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting shows a link between non-compliance with securities laws - such as insider trading, stock manipulation and providing false or misleading information about securities or the company's operation -- and future Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) violations.

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Brave Browser Claims 69x Better Performance For Its Ad-Blocker After Switching From C++ To Rust

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

The Brave web browser "claims to have delivered a '69x average improvement' in its ad-blocking technology using Rust in place of C++" reports ZDNet. They cite a blog post by Brave performance researcher Dr. Andrius Aucinas and Brave's chief scientist Dr. Ben Livshits: The improvements can be experienced in its experimental developer and nightly channel releases... "We implemented the new engine in Rust as a memory-safe, performant language compilable down to native code and suitable to run within the native browser core as well as being packaged in a standalone Node.js module," the two Brave scientists said. The new engine means the Chromium-based browser can cut the average request classification time down to 5.6 microseconds, a unit of time that's equal to a millionth of one second. Aucinas and Livshits argue that the micro-improvements in browser performance might not seem significant to end users but do translate to good things for a computer's main processor. "Although most users are unlikely to notice much of a difference in cutting the ad-blocker overheads, the 69x reduction in overheads means the device CPU has so much more time to perform other functions," the pair explain. Their blog post notes that loading a web page today can be incredibly complex. "Since loading an average website involves 75 requests that need to be checked against tens of thousands of rules, it must also be efficient."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Your Monday Briefing

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

North Korea, Hong Kong, gay pride: Here’s what you need to know.

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Stocks Rise in Asia on Trade Truce, but Investors Still Signal Worries

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Markets cheered the resumption of negotiations between Washington and Beijing. Still, many doubt the two sides can reach a deal anytime soon.

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Japan resumes commercial whaling, but days could be numbered

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Commercial whaling resumes on Monday, but financial support for previous 'research' whaling will be stopped.

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An Automation Tipping Point? The Rise of 'Robotics as a Service'

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

"Robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) is about to eat the world of work" argues Hooman Radfar, a partner at the startup studio Expa who's been "actively investing in and looking for new companies" catalyzing the change." Companies buy massive robots and software solutions that are customized -- at great cost -- to their specific needs. The massive conglomerates that sell these robots have dominated the field for decades, but that is about to change. One major factor driving this change is how dramatically globalization has reduced hardware production costs and capabilities. At the same time, cheap and powerful computing and cloud infrastructure are now also readily available and easy to spin up. As a result, vertical-specific, robotic-powered, solutions can today be offered as variable cost services versus being sold at a fixed cost. Just as cable companies include the costs of set-top boxes in their monthly bill, robots and their associated software will be bundled together and sold in a subscription package. This change to the robotics business model will have profound implications, radically transforming markets and at the same time changing the future of work. With a new variable cost model in place as a result of subscription packages, it's simple to calculate when a market is about to tip to favor RaaS. A market has hit its automation tipping point when an RaaS solution is introduced with a unit cost that is less than or equal to the unit cost for humans-in-the-loop to conduct the same task... One market that has already reached its automation tipping point is the enterprise building security market... Crop dusting ($70 billion), industrial cleaning ($78 billion), warehouse management ($21 billion), and many more service markets are tipping. When these sectors hit their automation tipping point, we will see the same level of industry disruption currently taking place in the building security market. The changes taking place in the enterprise will also deeply impact consumer markets, and ultimately society, in profound and potentially challenging ways. We are at the start of a massive shift in how work gets done. One study predicted the worldwide RaaSS market would be $34.7 within three years, according to the article, which also explores how the building security market is already being disrupted. "Instead of manning a building with three to four people, you can have one human managing a few remote robots" -- at a cost that's 30% cheaper. "Moreover, all the data and insights collected via these robots is organized and made available for building and security optimization. It isn't just cheaper, it's better. There's no turning back -- this market has hit its automation tipping point."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Israeli missile strike kills civilians: Syrian state media

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

A state-run broadcaster said four civilians including a baby killed while Syrian military said it confronted the attack.

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This North Korea Nuclear Deal Would Halt New Weapons but Initially Keep Arsenal Intact

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

An idea taking shape inside the Trump administration would amount to negotiating a nuclear freeze that essentially enshrines the status quo, tacitly accepting the North as a nuclear power.

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Genomic warning flag just in time for beach season: Jellyfish toxins

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

An article published today in the Open Access journal GigaScience might make you squirm if you plan to hit the beach. This article presents the draft genomes of three jellyfish species, which have a range of physical traits and level of toxicity. Jellyfish kill more people than sharks, stingrays, and sea snakes combined; thus, having sequences and their analyses available provides an essential resource for future investigation of toxin gene evolution and body shape differences.

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A Global Gay Pride Weekend, in Photos

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

An outpouring of celebration, and a demand for change, 50 years after Stonewall.

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Hong Kong protesters block roads on China handover anniversary

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

At least three major thoroughfares siezed by young, masked demonstrators, AFP reports.

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Hong Kong Protest Live Updates: Demonstrators Try to Disrupt Handover Anniversary Event

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Tense scenes as Hong Kong’s top officials prepared to hold an annual ceremony marking city’s return to Chinese control from Britain.

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'Millions march': Sudanese renew protests to demand civilian rule

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Amid tightened security, thousands of Sudanese take part in mass demonstrations, dubbed the 'millions march'.

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A Monster to History, Stalin Is a Tourist Magnet in His Hometown

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

How do you market a homegrown monster to the rest of the world? A popular museum in Stalin’s hometown in Georgia adopts an admiring tone, and the guided tour skips over his millions of victims.

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Venezuelan migrants risk discrimination for new life in Chile

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Chile clamps down on undocumented migration, closing the door to migrants as the country's immigration is soaring again.

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Arabs in Syria's Deir Az Zor protest against Kurdish forces

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Why people in Syria's Deir Az Zor are frustrated with Kurdish forces controlling the area.

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Chinese forces show off power as Hong Kong gears up for protests

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Critics speculate this is a deliberate ploy by China to make its presence felt in Hong Kong and a reminder that Beijing holds the ultimate authority over this former British territory.

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Egypt's Aboul Fotouh 'suffers double heart attack' in jail

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Former presidential candidate and critic of el-Sisi suffers double heart attack in Cairo's Torah prison, his son says.

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Burkini debate reignited in France as Grenoble women defy ban

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Women wore full-body swimsuits amid the heatwave, leading to a political debate and planned naked counter-protest.

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Dozens Killed as Taliban Bombs in 4 Humvees Rip Through Afghan District

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Insurgents rammed the vehicles full of explosives into a compound that the government had moved once after militant fighters took over its original location.

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‘I Was Done With All the Silences’: How an Academic Got Personal in ‘Notes to Self’

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Emilie Pine talks about her remarkably frank essay collection, a best seller in Ireland that confronts infertility, sexual violence and other taboos.

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Does Japan still have a taste for whale meat?

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Japan is set to resume commercial whaling, but its people may have lost their taste for the meat.

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Palestinian businessman freed by PA after Bahrain meeting arrest

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Family source says Hebron businessman Salah Abu Mayala was home following arrest for taking part in Manama workshop.

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A new cold war in Africa

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

The increasing tensions between China and the US will be detrimental to African prosperity and peace.

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Taliban official: Latest round of Doha talks with US 'critical'

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Spokesperson for the Taliban says both the armed group and the US are looking for 'tangible results' during Qatar talks.

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Israel arrests Palestinian minister in Jerusalem

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Arrest comes after minister Fadi al-Hadami accompanied Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on a tour of Al-Aqsa compound.

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South Koreans react with hope, scepticism over Trump-Kim meeting

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

While some in South Korea are positive, others see the Kim-trump meeting as 'all style and no substance'.

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Moscow's lone climate protester: 'We need to talk about it now'

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Arshak Makichyan raises awareness with a demonstration featuring just himself and a cardboard sign in Pushkin Square.

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Violence in DRC forces thousands to flee to Uganda

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Thousands of Congolese are patiently waiting in Drodro for answers from the government near the border between DR Congo and Uganda.

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Albania: Polls open in tense local elections

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Sunday's elections are seen as a key test of democracy in Albania, which has been beset by months of political turmoil.

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Albania local elections: Opposition refuses to take part

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Voting will be held to elect mayors and local councils in 61 districts.

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Saudi Arabia intercepts two Houthi drones launched into kingdom

By June 30, 2019 No comments:

Saudi-led coalition spokesperson says drone attacks on provinces of Jizan and Asir resulted in no casualties.

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Trump confirms to meet Kim at DMZ

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Unprecedented meeting between Kim and Trump at Demilitarized Zone to go ahead on Sunday to 'just shake hands quickly'.

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Trump and Kim Jong-un to Meet at DMZ Dividing Korea

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

The North Korean leader accepted Mr. Trump’s unorthodox invitation posted on Twitter just a day earlier for what will be the third time the two have gotten together in person.

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Venezuelan Navy Captain Accused of Rebellion Dies After Signs of Torture

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

The death underlined President Nicolás Maduro’s increasingly ferocious repression campaign amid a spiraling economic crisis.

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One Casualty of the Palm Oil Industry: An Orangutan Mother, Shot 74 Times

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Indonesia has promised to stop clearing jungle for plantations. So why are endangered apes still on the front lines of the conservation battle?

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New Mac Malware Abuses Recently Disclosed Gatekeeper Zero-Day

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

puddingebola writes: In May, security researcher Filippo Cavallarin made public a vulnerability in macOS's Gatekeeper. The vulnerability can allow an attacker to use a symlink and an NFS server to bypass Gatekeepers authentication and run malicious code. The malware has been named OSX/Linker and has been tied to the same group that operates the OSX/Surfbuyer adware. All macOS versions are affected, including the latest 10.14.5, and Apple has yet to release a patch to this day, a full month after Cavallarin's public disclosure.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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G20 summit: China, US pause trade war with talks 'back on track'

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Trump says while he will not lift existing import tariffs, he will refrain from slapping new levies on Chinese goods.

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Taliban kill 25 as peace talks with US get under way in Doha

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

The Taliban are to meet the US envoy for a seventh round of negotiations in the Qatari capital.

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Boycott by Whites of South African Restaurant Reflects Growing Sense of Grievance

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Many Afrikaners are spurning a once-cherished restaurant chain to protest its banning of a white man. The boycott has drawn “an eye roll” among many black South Africans.

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Italy Arrests Captain of Ship That Rescued Dozens of Migrants at Sea

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Capt. Carola Rackete, an outlaw to some and a heroine to others, was seized after her ship, the Sea Watch 3, docked in Lampedusa and 42 migrants disembarked.

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Sudan braces for 'millions march' as defiant protesters regroup

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

June 30 protests expected to be first mass demonstration since deadly crackdown by security forces early this month.

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Copa America: Chile beats Colombia on penalties to reach semis

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

After having two goals disqualified after video reviews, Chile kept its cool and stayed on track to defend its title.

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US deploys F-22 stealth fighters to Qatar amid Iran tensions

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

F-22 fighter jets deployed to Qatar for the first time, US military says, adding to buildup of US forces in the Gulf.

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Islamberg: three plead guilty in bomb plot on NY Muslim community

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Investigators uncovered the plan and arrested the three men in January after a student reported a suspicious comment.

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The 'deal of the century' as a deliberate deception

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Kushner's plan recycles failed past proposals and will clearly not succeed. But was it meant to in the first place?

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Sea-Watch enters Lampedusa, captain Carola Rackete arrested

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

German charity rescue ship with 40 migrants on board docks after 'tense' days-long standoff with Italian authorities.

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ISS Is Home To Molds That Can Withstand Radiation Doses That Would Kill a Human, Researchers Find

By June 29, 2019 No comments:

Mold spores commonly found aboard the International Space Station (ISS) turn out to be radiation resistant enough to survive 200 times the X-ray dose needed to kill a human being. Based on experiments by a team of researchers led by Marta Cortesao, a microbiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, the new study indicates that sterilizing interplanetary spacecraft may be much more difficult than previously thought. New Atlas reports: The researchers exposed samples of Aspergillus and Pennicillium spores to X-rays, heavy ions, and high-frequency ultraviolet light of the kinds and intensities found in space. Such radiation damages DNA and breaks down cell structures, but the spores survived X-rays up to 1,000 gray, heavy ions at 500 gray, and UV rays up to 3,000 joules per meter squared. Gray is a measurement of radiation exposure based on the absorption of one joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. To place the results into perspective, five gray will kill a person and 0.7 gray is how much radiation the crew of a Mars mission would receive on a 180-day mission. Since mold spores can already survive heat, cold, chemicals, and drying out, being able to take on radiation as well poses new challenges. It means that not only will manned missions have to put a lot of effort into keeping the ship clean and healthy, it also means that unmanned planetary missions, which must be free of terrestrial organisms to prevent contaminating other worlds, will be harder to sterilize. But according to Cortesao there is a positive side to this resiliency. Since fungal spores are hard to kill, they'd be easier to carry along and grow under controlled conditions in space, so they can be used as raw materials or act as biological factories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Trump Invites Kim Jong-un to Meet Him at the DMZ on Sunday

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

President Trump said in a Twitter post that he would be happy to greet Mr. Kim across the line that has divided Korea for nearly 75 years.

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Atomic 'patchwork' using heteroepitaxy for next generation semiconductor devices

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

(Tokyo Metropolitan University) Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have grown atomically thin crystalline layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with varying composition over space, continuously feeding in different types of TMDC to a growth chamber to tailor changes in properties. Examples include 20nm strips surrounded by different TMDCs with atomically straight interfaces, and layered structures. They also directly probed the electronic properties of these heterostructures; potential applications include electronics with unparalleled power efficiency.

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Atomic 'patchwork' using heteroepitaxy for next generation semiconductor devices

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have grown atomically thin crystalline layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with varying composition over space, continuously feeding in different types of TMDC to a growth chamber to tailor changes in properties. Examples include 20nm strips surrounded by different TMDCs with atomically straight interfaces, and layered structures. They also directly probed the electronic properties of these heterostructures; potential applications include electronics with unparalleled power efficiency.

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Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced To Lower-Paid Engineers

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing's 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors. The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs. Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Italy Stings Facebook With $1.1 Million Fine For Cambridge Analytica Data Misuse

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

Italy's data protection watchdog has slapped Facebook with a $1.1 million fine for violations of local privacy law attached to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal. TechCrunch reports: Last year it emerged that up to 87 million Facebook users had had their data siphoned out of the social media giant's platform by an app developer working for the controversial (and now defunct) political data company, Cambridge Analytica. The offences in question occurred prior to Europe's tough new data protection framework, GDPR, coming into force -- hence the relatively small size of the fine in this case, which has been calculated under Italy's prior data protection regime. (Whereas fines under GDPR can scale as high as 4% of a company's annual global turnover.) A Facebook spokesperson issued the following statement: "We have said before that we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015. However, evidence indicates that no Italian user data was shared with Cambridge Analytica. Dr Kogan only shared data with Cambridge Analytica in relation to U.S. users. We made major changes to our platform back then and have also significantly restricted the information which app developers can access. We're focused on protecting people's privacy and have invested in people, technology and partnerships, including hiring more than 20,000 people focused on safety and security over the last year. We will review the Garante's decision and will continue to engage constructively with their concerns."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Property of Light Discovered

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain and the U.S. has announced that they have discovered a new property of light -- self-torque. Their findings have been published in the journal Science. Phys.Org reports: Scientists have long known about such properties of light as wavelength. More recently, researchers have found that light can also be twisted, a property called angular momentum. Beams with highly structured angular momentum are said to have orbital angular momentum (OAM), and are called vortex beams. They appear as a helix surrounding a common center, and when they strike a flat surface, they appear as doughnut-shaped. In this new effort, the researchers were working with OAM beams when they found the light behaving in a way that had never been seen before. The experiments involved firing two lasers at a cloud of argon gasâ"doing so forced the beams to overlap, and they joined and were emitted as a single beam from the other side of the argon cloud. The result was a type of vortex beam. The researchers then wondered what would happen if the lasers had different orbital angular momentum and if they were slightly out of sync. This resulted in a beam that looked like a corkscrew with a gradually changing twist. And when the beam struck a flat surface, it looked like a crescent moon. The researchers noted that looked at another way, a single photon at the front of the beam was orbiting around its center more slowly than a photon at the back of the beam. The researchers promptly dubbed the new property self-torque -- and not only is it a newly discovered property of light, it is also one that has never even been predicted. Their technique may be used to modulate the orbital angular momentum of light in ways very similar to modulating frequencies in communications equipment, leading to the development of novel devices that make use of manipulating extremely tiny materials.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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House Votes To Block Ajit Pai's Plan To Kill San Francisco Broadband Law

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to block Ajit Pai's attempt to kill a San Francisco ordinance designed to promote broadband competition in apartment buildings. As we reported last week, the Federal Communications Commission chair has scheduled a July 10 vote on a measure that would preempt the San Francisco city ordinance, which lets Internet service providers use the existing wiring inside multiunit residential and commercial properties even if the wiring is already used by another ISP that serves the building. The ordinance applies only when the inside wiring belongs to the property owner, but it makes it easier for ISPs to compete in many multiunit buildings already served by another provider. Pai claimed that the city's rule "deters broadband deployment" and infringes on the FCC's regulation of cable wiring. But US Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) proposed a budget amendment that would forbid the FCC from using any funding to implement or enforce Pai's preemption proposal. The House, which is controlled by Democrats, yesterday approved the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for fiscal 2020 in a mostly party-line vote of 224-196. Earlier in the day, the House approved a block of amendments including Porter's proposal that "prohibits the Federal Communications Committee from finalizing a draft declaratory ruling that would overturn local ordinances that promote broadband competition." The amendment's passage by a vote of 227-220 was also noted in the Congressional Record.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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American Missiles Found in Libyan Rebel Compound

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

The powerful American missiles had fallen into the hands of rebels fighting a U.S.-backed government. The U.S. appears to have sold the missiles to the U.A.E.

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Iran Seizes 1,000 Bitcoin Mining Machines Using Subsidized Power

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

Iranian authorities have seized about 1,000 bitcoin mining machines in two abandoned factories, after warnings that the activity had led to a spike in consumption of government-subsidized electricity. Reuters reports: "Two of these bitcoin farms have been identified, with a consumption of one megawatt,"; Arash Navab, a power official in the central province of Yazd, told the television. The machines, which produce cryptocurrencies that are banned in Iran, were mostly to blame for a 7% increase in power consumption in the month to June 21, according to an Energy Ministry spokesman, quoted by the website of state-run Press TV. In 2018, Iran's central bank banned the country's banks from dealing in cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, over money-laundering concerns.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘I Didn’t Want Them to Go’: Salvadorans Grieve for Father and Daughter Who Drowned

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

A photograph capturing the fate of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Angie Valeria, points to one of the major drivers of the crisis that convinced them to migrate: economic duress.

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Turkish soldier dies in attack on military post in Syria's Idlib

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

Military says it retaliated by opening fire on positions where attacks were launched by President Assad's forces.

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Malaysia to decriminalise drug use, says health minister

By June 28, 2019 No comments:

Malaysia has some of the world's most punitive drugs policies, but the new government is reviewing the approach.

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Pink noise boosts deep sleep in mild cognitive impairment patients

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Gentle sound stimulation played during deep sleep enhanced deep sleep for people with mild cognitive impairment, who are at risk for Alzheimer's disease, a new study found. Those whose brains responded the most robustly to the sound stimulation showed an improved memory response the following day. These results suggest improving sleep is a promising novel approach to stave off dementia. The technology can be adapted for home use.

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'Shame and humiliation': Aceh's Sharia violates human rights

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Aceh's Sharia punishments are rooted in cultural traditions and few are willing to speak publicly against the practice.

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Controlling deadly malaria without chemicals

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

(University of California - Riverside) Scientists have finally found malaria's Achilles' heel, a neurotoxin that isn't harmful to any living thing except Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.

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US Democratic debate night two: What did the candidates say?

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Ten more candidates took the stage on Thursday in the final night of the first 2020 Democratic debate.

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Before Talks With Trump, Xi Promotes His Image as a Leader With Friends

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

At the G20 summit, Mr. Xi needs to be shown as pursuing a bigger agenda who can offset animosities with the United States.

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Controlling deadly malaria without chemicals

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Scientists have finally found malaria's Achilles' heel, a neurotoxin that isn't harmful to any living thing except Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.

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Toxic substances found in the glass and decoration of alcoholic beverage bottles

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

New research by the University of Plymouth shows that bottles of beer, wine and spirits contain potentially harmful levels of toxic elements, such as lead and cadmium, in their enamelled decorations.

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Your Friday Briefing

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

G20, Debate, Italy: Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

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Airplane Contrails Will Do Triple the Damage They Do Today By 2050, Study Finds

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: The contrails left by airplanes last only hours. But they are now so widespread that their warming effect is greater than that of all the carbon dioxide emitted by airplanes that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the first flight of the Wright brothers. Worse still, this non-CO2 warming effect is set to triple by 2050, according to a study by Ulrike Burkhardt and colleagues at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany. Altogether, flying is responsible for around 5 percent of global warming, the team say, so this figure will soar even higher -- and no meaningful actions are being taken to prevent this. The researchers used a computer model of the atmosphere to estimate how much warming contrails caused in 2006 -- the latest year for which a detailed air traffic inventory is available -- and how much they will cause by 2050, when air traffic is expected to be four times higher. The model takes account of not only of the change in air traffic volume, but also the location and altitude of flights, along with the changing climate. The team conclude that the warming effect of contrails will rise from 50 milliwatts per square meter of the earth's surface in 2006 to 160 mW/m^2 by 2050. In comparison, the warming due to CO2 from aviation will rise from 24 mW/m^2 to 84 mW/m^2 by 2050. If the airline industry improves fuel efficiency and reduces the number of soot particles by improving fuels and engines, the researchers say the warming from contrails by 2050 will be limited to 140 mW/m^2 and the warming from CO2 to 60 mW/m^2. The study has been published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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As New York Celebrates Pride, Australia Debates Freedom

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The case of Israel Folau, a Christian rugby player whose contract was canceled over his anti-gay posts, has spurred a national rift over how rights coexist.

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G20 Summit 2019: All the latest updates

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Follow Al Jazeera's coverage of the G20 Summit as leaders from the member nations gather in the Japanese city of Osaka.

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Trump White House Reportedly Debating Encryption Policy Behind Closed Doors

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

According to a report in Politico, the Trump administration held a National Security Council meeting on Wednesday that weighed the challenges and benefits of encryption. "One of Politico's sources said that the meeting was split into two camps: Decide, create and publicize the administration's position on encryption or go so far as to ask Congress for legislation to ban end-to-end encryption," reports Gizmodo. From the report: That would be a huge escalation in the encryption fight and, moreover, would probably be unsuccessful due to a lack of willpower in Congress. No decision was made by the Trump administration officials, Politico reported. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The fact that these discussions are ongoing both within the White House and with Silicon Valley shows that the issue is still very much alive within the corridors of power.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sudan protest leaders receive new AU, Ethiopia transition plan

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

The proposal calls for a civilian-majority ruling body as demanded by protesters but lacks in other details.

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Nearly 250 arrested in Ethiopia after foiled coup: State TV

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

The state broadcaster did not give details of arrests, but a regional party said 56 of its members had been detained.

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In Bahrain, Gaza Is Pitched as a ‘Hot I.P.O.’ Many Palestinians Aren’t Buying It.

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

A White House conference aimed at showing the Palestinians the economic benefits of the future Trump peace plan was shunned by most Palestinians.

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Microsoft Excel Power Query Feature Can Be Abused For Malware Distribution

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Security researchers have devised a method to abuse a legitimate Microsoft Excel technology named Power Query to run malicious code on users' systems with minimal interaction. ZDNet reports: Power Query is a data connection technology that can allow Excel files to discover, connect, combine, and manipulate data before importing it from remote sources, such as an external database, text document, another spreadsheet, or a web page. The tool is included with recent versions of Excel and available as a separate downloadable add-in for older Excel versions. In research published today and shared with ZDNet, Ofir Shlomo, a security researcher with the Mimecast Threat Center, described a technique through which Power Query features could be abused to run malicious code on users' systems. The technique relies on creating malformed Excel documents that use Power Query to import data from an attacker's remote server. "Using Power Query, attackers could embed malicious content in a separate data source, and then load the content into the spreadsheet when it is opened," Shlomo said. "The malicious code could be used to drop and execute malware that can compromise the user's machine." Mimecast's technique can even bypass security sandboxes that analyze documents sent via email before allowing users to download and open them. Microsoft has yet to issue a fix for the vulnerability, but did release an advisory document for users, offering a way to beef up security.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NASA will fly a drone to Titan to search for life

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

The Dragonfly mission, which will launch in 2026 and land in 2034, will send a rotorcraft to the Saturn's largest moon.

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U.S. and China Angle for Trade Truce, but Both Insist the Other Will Back Down

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

As President Trump prepares for a pivotal meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, both countries say they do not need to compromise to bring a bruising trade war to an end.

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Google Maps Can Now Predict How Crowded Your Bus Or Trail Will Be

By June 27, 2019 No comments:

Google Maps is getting a pair of updates that will offer live traffic delays for busses in the cities where it didn't already provide real-time updates, and another that will tell you how crowded your bus, train, or subway car will be. TechCrunch reports: The latter is perhaps the more interesting of the two, as it represents a new prediction technique Google has been perfecting for over half a year. Starting in October, the company began to ask Google Maps users to rate their journey if they had traveled during peak commuting hours of 6 am to 10 am. Google asked about how many seats were available or if it was standing room only, in order to identify which lines had the highest number of crowdedness reports. Over time, it was able to model this data into a new prediction capability designed to tell transit riders how packed their bus or train would be. It also used this data to create rankings of the most crowded routes and stops around the world.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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