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Twitter Launches Pinterest Rival In Effort To Boost Profits

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News broke on Saturday evening that Twitter is experimenting with a couple of new e-commerce features on its platform, in an effort to fight rival Pinterest and gain a cut of its lucrative e-commerce referral business.

In the first move, Twitter has launched new pages dedicated to specific places and products.

For example, searching for the name of a popular book leads to a page where there’s a description of the book, top tweets related to it, and other related media like photos and videos.

Importantly for Twitter, there’s a button that allows for the purchase the book directly from Twitter.

The concept will apply to most major products, not just books.

The company also announced “Collections” that are curated lists of products, a very similar idea to Pinterest’s ‘boards.’

Talkshow host Ellen DeGeneres has a ‘collection’ entitled “Best of the Ellen Shop,” which contains a curated selection of items from DeGeneres’ official store.

Unlike Product pages, Collections – at least for the moment – do not allow users to buy something directly from the page, instead connecting users to the online store where they can complete the purchase. Such linking to stores means Twitter can begin charging for referrals to them and taking a cut of sales transactions. The timing of this feature is notable, as it will be fully in place for the lucrative holiday shopping season this fall.

Like the specific product pages, Collections will show tweets, images and videos relating to all the products that are listed in a collection. It appears collections aren’t designed to be a comprehensive listing of all the products a brand, but rather themed assortments designed to appeal to specific groups – for instance Nike Running or Martha Stewart’s Favorite Kitchen Gadgets.

Twitter currently has 41 different partners signed up for the service, including major brands like TechCrunch, Nike, The Wirecutter and Reese Witherspoon.

While Twitter does not yet take a cut of sales from transactions that are completed through its new shopping features, it will likely do so be the time the all important holiday shopping season comes around.

The new shopping features are available on Twitter’s website, Android and iOS apps.

Polish Airline LOT Grounds Flights After Hack Attack

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In the latest sign that hacking attacks are increasingly compromising safety systems, 1,400 passengers of Polish flag carrier LOT Polish Airlines were stuck in Warsaw after the company discovered it was unable to file flight plans for its departing aircraft due to a sophisticated attack on its computer network.

According to reports the airline’s ground computer system, which is used to issue flight plans, was hacked on Sunday afternoon.

The system was supposedly “fixed” after five hours, but the incident resulted in ten cancellations and more than a dozen flights being delayed.

LOT stated that it had “encountered IT attack, that affected our ground operation systems. As a result we’re not able to create flight plans, and outbound flights from Warsaw are not able to depart.”

“We’d like to underline, that it has no influence on plane systems. Aircrafts already airborne will continue their flights. Planes with flight plans already filed will return to Warsaw normally,” it further elaborated.

A LOT spokesperson claimed that the company had taken care of the passengers on Sunday night and stated it was providing hotels for those who needed to stay the night in Warsaw.

Spokesman Adrian Kubicki went on record as saying that at no point was the safety of ongoing flights compromised.

“We’re using state-of-the-art computer systems, so this could potentially be a threat to others in the industry,” Kubicki said.

Yet the attack is now being investigated by the authorities and in these cases its best to assume the worst rather than what the victim is telling you, given they have every incentive to downplay the significance.

Its likely in this case that attackers didn’t mean to disrupt the safety of the airline yet likely did so accidentally or potentially could have. Any compromise of an airline reservation system, for instance, could allow unauthorized passengers to board the aircraft.

The full scope of the damage won’t emerge for a few weeks, as the FBI and other EU agencies are all investigating, showing just how serious the incident was.

European Parliament Votes To Extend Sanctions On Russia

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The gathering of European Union foreign ministers on Monday in Luxembourg resulted in the extension of sanctions against Russia. The sanctions had been imposed because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, an EU spokeswoman stated, and will now be continued.

The sanctions began a year ago to punish Russia shortly after its troops moved over the border in Crimea and re-took the area that in Soviet times was a Russian enclave. While Russia has denied involvement, the world almost immediately saw through the thinly disguised Russian troops, tanks, armored vehicles and sophisticated missile systems.

The sanctions mean the assets of some Russian companies and individuals will remain frozen and travel bans will remain in place against certain officials.

A Kremlin spokesman, predictably, condemned the extension.

“Russia, naturally, considers these sanctions to be unfounded and illegal, and we have never been the instigators of sanction measures,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

In typically deluded Russian thinking, likely driven by its increasingly irrational dictator Vladimir Putin, Peskov said Russia would respond by extending its own sanctions against the European Union, including restrictions on the import to Russia of foodstuffs from the EU.

Given the EU imports very little to Russia, the sanctions aren’t exactly offsetting.

The sanctions continue to wreak havoc on the Russian economy, which is struggling with high unemployment, a falling Ruble and low oil prices. Oil and related products are Russia’s main export.

Taylor’s Tantrum Leads To Apple Music Policy Change

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In what can only be described as the rich squabbling with the richer, Taylor Swift’s announcement she would pull her album from Apple’s new streaming service has the company changing its tune.

Just hours after the super wealthy pop-star criticized Apple in an open letter posted online, the Cupertino based maker of iDevices announced Sunday that it will indeed pay royalties to artists and record labels for music played during a free, three month trial of its new streaming music service.

Previously Apple had negotiated with the record labels to waive such fees during the free trial period.

Tantrums, predictably, ensued.

Apple will share revenue from $10 per month paid subscriptions to its new Apple Music service with artists but Swift, who notoriously hates the idea of people having access to radio, said she would withhold her latest album because Apple wasn’t planning to pay artists and labels directly for the use of their music during the free trial period.

Yet the move has more to do with Swift’s disdain for the concept of radio than it does Apple’s opportunistic cash grab. Swift has withheld her music from other streaming sites she feels simply don’t pay enough, despite the fact music has made her fantastically wealthy.

“When I woke up this morning and I saw Taylor’s note that she had written, it really solidified that we needed to make a change,” said Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue, in a rare press interview.

Apple maintains that it negotiated revenue sharing at rates that are slightly higher than the industry standard, in order to compensate for the three months that it plans to offer its streaming service for free.

“We had factored that in,” Cue said Sunday. But asking rich pop-stars to do math is clearly a bridge too far, especially when those artists want to use advances in technology to push music back to medieval times, where only the very rich could afford to purchase playable music.

Swift’s comments show just how out of touch the diva is with reality, as Apple has been the lead advocate for that medieval repression, stubbornly pushing its iTunes service, which requires users to pay a high rate for each and every song the listen to.

But as we covered earlier, the reality for most Americans is that both iTunes and even services like Apple Music are just too expensive.

This is why radio worked. It was delivered at no cost for listeners and used a promotional tool by record labels. By promoting a small group of artists, those that could afford to pay bought albums and concert tickets, which created the rockstar, a musician who could become fantastically wealthy.

That wealth was created only because a select few artist got fed into the gigantic no cost promotional machine that was radio. Over the air television, again delivered at no cost, also played a major role.

In Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify and all the other streaming music services the same concept holds, except record labels, broadcasters and artists have all decided to use the new medium to extract even more fees from their fans. $10 per month, to be precise.

In short, Big Music wants you to pay for the privilege of them promoting to you.

Ms Swift doesn’t seem to appreciate any of this, still thinking of herself as a homely old artist just making a living. Yet she, and her tens of millions, exist precisely because her music hasn’t been kept locked away but because it has been shared far and wide, for free.

The most obvious way she benefited from this free distribution is that she rose to fame on the Nashville record circuit doing both free concerts and then signing a with a major label, which broadcast her for free across the nation on radio.

She won the lottery to be fed into the no cost promotion machine and didn’t drop the ball. Fame, fortune and an army of Swifties predictably followed.

But Swift has clearly forgotten all this or never bothered to look into it, as she announced on her Twitter account last night that she was “elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us.”

Just what exactly she’s relieved from should probably be filed under the hashtag #popstarproblems, while just who exactly she means by ‘us’ is equally quizzical.

Ms Swift is in the top .01% of artists globally in terms of earnings thanks specifically to the mass promotion offered by radio and the rockstar phenomena that promotional juggernaut created.

She can either be a rockstar with no cost radio or a regular artist making an average living with 100% paid music distribution.

We’re betting she’ll keep her tens of millions.

Taliban Stage Deadly Assault On Afghan Parliament In Kabul

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Taliban militants attacked the Afghan parliament with bombs and rockets Monday in an attempt that wounded dozens of civilians and shocked lawmakers.

The terrorist group detonated a large car bomb near the outer wall of the parliament compound, sending dense smoke into the sky. As the chaos unfolded, six Taliban militants then tried to storm inside, according to police spokesman Ebadullah Karimi.

Afghan security forces were able to defeat the attackers who, once pushed out, moved into a nearby building, where they continued attacking with rocket propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles. Yet all six attackers were eventually killed in the firefight, according to Karimi.

Inside the parliament building the blast shattered glass and shook loose the ceiling which filled the hall with dust. Lawmakers were assembled and in a meeting when the first explosion occurred.

The general meeting was for Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, the nominee for defense minister, and he was to be introduced before presenting his plans and policies ahead of a confirmation vote.

According to the police spokesman all of the lawmakers were unharmed and evacuated from the parliament building in short order.

Yet 31 civilians were wounded in the attack, including three children, according to Dr. Kabir Amiri, chief of Kabul Central Hospitals.

The Taliban took to one of their Twitter accounts and informed the world that the group chose to target the parliament specifically because it was the day the defense minister was to be introduced.

The UN mission in Afghanistan swiftly condemned the attack, deeming it “a clear and deliberate affront to democracy in Afghanistan.”

The U.S. Embassy said the attack showed “blatant disrespect for democracy and the rule of law.”

Monday’s attack is just the latest in a string of high-profile attacks by the Taliban in the Afghan capital.

The militants have recently been targeting hotels housing foreigners, and attacked the Park Palace Guest House last month, killing more than a dozen people.

Afghan forces continue to struggle with a Taliban offensive across different parts of the country and American troops pulled out of the country last year.

Hawaii Makes History As First State To Raise Smoking Age To 21

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In what surely should have been done years ago, Hawaii became the first state in the union to raise the legal smoking age statewide to 21, after its governor signed the bill into law on Friday.

The new law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2016, and in addition to smoke and smokeless tobacco will also ban the sale, purchase or use of electronic cigarettes as well.

“Raising the minimum age as part of our comprehensive tobacco control efforts will help reduce tobacco use among our youth and increase the likelihood that our keiki [children] will grow up to be tobacco-free,” said Governor David Ige.

The new ban wasn’t the only anti-smoking legislation signed into law on Friday as Ige also signed a bill banning smoking and e-cigarette use at state parks and beaches. Smoking and e-cigarette use are already banned in all city and county parks.

In most U.S. states the legal smoking age is 18, while a small number have set it at 19, though some cities and counties, including New York City and Hawaii County, have already raised the age requirement to 21.

Lawmakers in Washington state and California will likely take notice of the new measure, as they have been pushing to raise the legal smoking age to 21 in their own states.

Roughly nine out of 10 smokers in Hawaii begin smoking before the age of 21 according to the governor’s office.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, tobacco use kills 1,400 people and costs over $526 million in medical bills annually in the state of Hawaii.

Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for over 480,000 deaths annually, or one of every five deaths overall, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Louisiana Governor Vetoes License Plate Readers Over Invasion Of Privacy

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In an all too rare move against the continued deployment of automated license plate readers (LPRs), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) vetoed a plan to acquire the scanners in the state, citing grave privacy issues. The move to use the readers had previously passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature by a large margin.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide are increasingly relying on these specialized cameras to scan cars and compare them at incredible speeds to a “hot list” of stolen or wanted vehicles or people. The data collected is kept for weeks, months, or even years and can be used for a variety of purposes, amounting a mass dragnet of people-tracking that greatly erodes privacy.

Jindal wrote in detail about his reasons for rejecting the legislation.

Senate Bill No. 250 would authorize the use of automatic license plate reader camera surveillance programs in various parishes throughout the state. The personal information captured by these cameras, which includes a person’s vehicle location, would be retained in a central database and accessible to not only participating law enforcement agencies but other specified private entities for a period of time regardless of whether or not the system detects that a person is in violation of vehicle insurance requirements. Camera programs such as these that make private information readily available beyond the scope of law enforcement, pose a fundamental risk to personal privacy and create large pools of information belonging to law abiding citizens that unfortunately can be extremely vulnerable to theft or misuse.

For these reasons, I have vetoed Senate Bill No. 250 and hereby return it to the Senate.

The bill would have limited the retention period to 60 days, though still allowed private companies and other parties to use the records of law abiding citizens.

Technology website Ars found earlier this year that of 4.6 million license plate records collected by police in Oakland, Calif. over four years just 0.16 percent of those reads were “hits.”

The site also discovered that the data is incredibly revealing, as they were able to find the address of a member of city council using nothing but the records, a data visualization tool, and his license plate number.

The move towards the license plate readers creates a vast dragnet of information, similar to the phone records collected by the NSA, that allow for detailed tracking of individual people in near real-time.

LPR data being used by third parties effectively turns police departments into trackers, whereby police track the movements of people and then sell the data to companies and other groups for a profit, allowing them detailed access to law-abiding citizens movements.

LPR technology has been widely condemned by human rights groups for its invasive nature and ineffectiveness as a policing tool.

History Making Human-Like ‘Pepper’ Robot Sells Out In Under A Minute

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Usually consumer gadgets that sell out in a minute carry a certain fruit logo but Japanese tech giant Softbank has a new type of hit product on its hands: Human-like robots.

SoftBank’s newly launched Pepper robot is proving to be an iPhone-like hit as the former mobile carrier said 1,000 units of the household robot sold out in one minute on Saturday.

The humanoid machine is a personal robot and is designed to become a member of the family. While it can’t do housework, it can converse, recognize emotions, develop its own “feelings” and pull information from the Internet such as emails and weather forecasts.

SoftBank describes Pepper as the world’s first personal robot to have its own emotions.

While nearly all of the Peppers were purchased online Saturday, 30 were made available by a lottery process on Friday at a SoftBank store in Tokyo.

A SoftBank spokesman did not provide information as to the identity of the initial buyers but did confirm that the company plans to make more Peppers available in July.

The robots were designed by Softbank-owned Aldebaran Robotics of France and feature has a wide array of sensors and a cloud-based artificial intelligence system.

At $1,600 it’s still a major purchase but cheap compared to other robots of comparable sophistication. There is also a small monthly fee for mobile data usage and insurance.

Pepper’s strong first day may put big tech giants like Apple, Google and Amazon on notice as a global rollout of Pepper will start next year by SoftBank.

Interestingly Pepper is manufactured by Apple’s number one iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group, in partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. The three companies are working on business applications for Pepper starting this fall.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, said Thursday that the partners are willing to sell Pepper at a loss for at least four years, but he sees the business as a major contributor to SoftBank’s revenue in 20 or 30 years. Partners Terry Gou of Foxconn and Jack Ma of Alibaba all envision robots becoming as important as automobiles and consumer electronics in the coming decades.

Surely in California, Google, Apple, Facebook, Tesla and others are taking note of the development and watching closely.

Italy Charges Bank Of China In Massive $5 Billion Money Laundering Scheme

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China’s government and businesses aren’t know for their ethical conduct and the world continues to take notice of this backward behavior, the most recent example being Italian prosecutors, who announced on Friday that are seeking to indict 297 people and the Bank of China itself for their role in a massive money laundering scheme uncovered earlier this month.

The accused are mostly Chinese migrants residing in Italy though they also include four senior managers of the Chinese state bank’s branch in Milan. Italian prosecutors have found that suspects even used Mafia-like techniques, including intimidation, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

The case shines a spotlight on the large underground Chinese economy in Europe and the inability to government and law enforcement officials to regulate the close-knit communities as well as the economic ties, both legal and illegal, that connect China with the West.

Prosecutors discovered that more than $5.1 billion in ill-gotten profits from counterfeiting, prostitution, labor exploitation and tax evasion rackets that were sent to China in less than four years using the money-transfer service that funneled the funds through the Bank of China.

China’s state banked earned over $1 million in commissions, according to Italian investigative documents. The money had been parceled into small amounts to avoid detection and the bank’s management and audit staff didn’t report suspicious transactions and instead helped conceal the source and destination of the funds.

China, which is currently looking for Western help in hunting its own economic criminals, refused to cooperate with the investigation, Italian officials said.

Once the money left Italy, it vanished, preventing Italian police from continuing their investigation in China, but the news reporters were able to track some of the missing funds to a large state import-export company that has previously been accused of repeatedly shipping counterfeit goods, including to the United States.

China’s government, via its state-run Global Times newspaper, defended the Bank of China and criticized the AP’s report as “strange.” The article quoted a ‘law expert’ saying that the Bank of China has “no obligation to cooperate with Italian police.”

While issuing the denial and not cooperating, the Chinese are increasingly pressuring Western governments to help hunt corrupt officials who have fled overseas.

Italy and China did sign a memorandum of judicial cooperation last September but so far, like so many Chinese deals, the collaboration has been decidedly in Beijing’s favor.

Italy extradited a Chinese national in February accused of stealing more than $225,515 during her employment at a securities company in Heibei province. According to China’s Ministry of Public Security tt was the first time anyone had been extradited from Europe for an alleged economic crime.

In Italy, institutions as well as individuals can be ordered to stand trial and it appears likely the latest case will see both individuals and the Bank of China itself charged.

The case has been ongoing for years, involving operations carried out between 2007 and 2010.

ISIS Booby Trapping Ancient Roman Ruins Of Palmyra With Mines And Bombs

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While ISIS hasn’t yet destroyed the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra is captured in May, it has now planted mines and bombs in the ancient part of the central Syrian city, amid the Roman-era ruins according to a group monitoring the war.

On Sunday The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was unclear whether the terror group was preparing to destroy the ancient ruins or had planted the explosives to deter government forces from advancing on the city.

“They have planted it yesterday. They also planted some around the Roman theater, we still do not know the real reason,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory

Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s head of antiquities, confirmed the reports, saying the accounts “seemed true.”

“The city is a hostage in their hands, the situation is dangerous.”

The radical Islamic group seized the city of 50,000 people and home of some of the world’s most best-preserved ancient Roman ruins in May.

The Islamic State has created a self-styled stat in Syria and Iraq, where it rules residents with strict Islamic law backed by sexual violence and death.

Its militants have a history of carrying out mass killings and rapes in the towns and cities they capture. They’ve also destroyed ancient monuments which they consider to be evidence of paganism.

Northeast Ohio Man Becomes Second U.S. Resident Charged With Supporting ISIS

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While the Obama administration fumbles with ISIS on the battlefields of the middle east, the FBI has a firm strategy at home: Arrest anyone supporting or trying to support the terror group.

That’s exactly what the agency did on Friday when it arrested a northeast Ohio man, alleging he attempted to provide support to the Islamic State terrorist group while residing in the Cleveland area.

Amir Said Abdul Rahman Al-Ghazi, 38, was arrested in the suburb of North Olmsted while attempting to purchase an AK-47 assault rifle from an undercover FBI agent, according to the criminal complaint. An FBI affidavit said Al-Ghazi had chatted with confidential informants about buying the rifle for use in an ISIS recruiting video.

Al-Ghazi used to be known as Robert McCollum, but changed his name earlier this year. During a search of Al-Ghazi’s apartment on Friday agents found a sword and an Islamic State flag.

Al-Ghazi, according to the charges, began using social media in July 2014 to pledge his support to the militant group and to recruit people to join the group.

While chatting online with FBI sources the man made remarks that he wanted to stage terrorist attacks in the U.S., such as the derailment of a train, according to the sworn affidavit by FBI agents.

In shocking remarks to undercover FBI agents Al-Ghazi said he wasn’t interested in a suicide attack, but did say would cut off the head of his non-Muslim son if Muslims were to go to war in America.

On another occasion he told undercover agents that he wanted to kill non-Muslims and said in an online chat: “You don’t fear death anymore its like walking thru a door for a martyr u know.”

Stephen Anthony, the agent in charge of the Cleveland FBI field office, said in a statement that “it is clear that no area is immune from the influence of ISIL [ISIS] and its recruitment machine. We hope this arrest will serve as a strong message to others who may consider providing support to terrorists.”

An FBI spokeswoman said at this stage in the investigation there is no evidence that Al-Ghazi traveled to the Middle East.

Robert McCollum, Al-Ghazi’s previous legal name, had a criminal history in Cleveland for drug offenses and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Also included in the indictment is an allegation he sold nearly 4.5 pounds of marijuana to a confidential informant starting in February 2014.

Al-Ghazi has been under surveillance by the FBI since the fall of 2013, following a complaint to the FBI about Al-Ghazi’s online activity.

It is estimate that ISIS has thousands of members like Al-Ghazi in the United States, who recruit and do other low level tasks for the terror group. The man is the second charged by the FBI, who promised more arrests in the coming weeks and months.

The fact Al-Ghazi was under surveillance for over two years show that the FBI is deeply connected to the online terrorist underworld and likely has a number of suspects it is poised to arrest.

The FBI refused to discuss such plans, citing ongoing operations.

Wildlife Officials Crush More Than One Ton Of Elephant Ivory In The Middle Of Times Square

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The world is increasingly getting angry with China and other Asian countries who, as we’ve covered before, continue to tolerate the illegal poaching and subsequent sales of endangered species derived products.

To highlight the United States’ resolve on the issue, law enforcement destroyed more than a ton of elephant ivory in New York’s Times Square on Friday.

The public display of outrage saw conservationists, lawmakers, wildlife officials, and bystanders watch as seized ivory was turned into sand-like powder by an industrial rock crusher.

“Today, we are not just crushing illegally poached ivory; we are crushing the bloody ivory market,” said Cristian Samper who is the president of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

“We are crushing any hopes by the poachers that they will profit by killing off our Earth’s majestic elephants. Criminals, take notice.”

Poaching is reducing elephant populations at an alarming rate, and the numbers are getting especially grim in Africa, where most of the giant animals are targeted.

“Elephant poaching is at its highest level in decades and now exceeds the species’ reproductive potential,” said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which organized the Times Square crushing.

Despite full awareness of just how perilous elephant and rhino survival has become, the illegal ivory trade has doubled worldwide since 2007. China and the United States are among the largest markets for the illegal ivory.

Such crushing started two years ago, when the United States crushed a six ton stockpile of ivory in Denver. Other nations, such as Gabon, Kenya and the Philippines have followed suit and destroyed large quantities in recent years.

The bulk of the ivory crushed Friday was confiscated during undercover operations by law enforcement, including a horde of ivory seized by a Philadelphia art dealer who pleaded guilty in federal court to smuggling African elephant ivory.

African elephants are classified as threatened under the endangered species act, while Rhinos are considered endangered.

The United States strictly prohibits commercial imports and rigorously regulates domestic trade of ivory products to ensure no new ivory is making it into the country.

About 35,000 elephants are slaughtered annually as the demand for ivory grows worldwide, particularly in China, where it is prized as art and used in quack medicine.

Taxi App Uber Banning Americans For Exercising Second Amendment Rights

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Ride sharing company Uber is positioning itself as a firm supporter of gun control, as it silently changed its policy on June 10th to ban any drivers or passengers caught carrying a firearm in ‘their’ taxis.

The policy is interesting, as Uber doesn’t actually own the taxis and doesn’t even consider itself legally a ride sharing company, preferring to instead license its ride coordination service and collect a fee for doing so in order to avoid regulation as a taxi service.

Yet despite its claim to not be a taxi operator, it plans to nonetheless control what you carry in taxis chartered through its service.

Uber said in a statement last week that it is banning firearms of any kind during rides arranged through the Uber platform, and drivers or riders who violate the rule will be banned from the service.

The company cited feedback from riders and drivers as the motivation for the decision, though it likely has to do with the philosophical beliefs of the company’s Californian owners, who are notoriously anti second amendment, than actual user feedback.

The new policy puts the company at odds with local law enforcement on the issue, as most communities regulate the transportation of firearms in taxi cabs.

Previously the company had honored local laws on the issue, but given the company’s frequent flouting of local laws, it should comes as no surprise they have once again decided to play by their own rules.

Report Finds All 50 U.S. States Fail To Meet Police Use Of Force Standards

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Coming on the heels of shocking police brutality in Missouri, Baltimore and Charleston caught on video, a new report by international human rights group Amnesty International has found that a stunning 50 of 50 U.S. states fail to comply with international standards on the lethal use of force by law enforcement officers.

The report, published by the groups U.S. division, found a further 13 states that fall beneath even lower legal standards of the U.S. constitutional law.

Shockingly nine states currently have no laws on record to deal with the issue.

Executive director for Amnesty USA, Steven Hawkins, said the findings show a “shocking lack of fundamental respect for the sanctity of human life”.

“While law enforcement in the United States is given the authority to use lethal force, there is no equal obligation to respect and preserve human life. It’s shocking that while we give law enforcement this extraordinary power, so many states either have no regulation on their books or nothing that complies with international standards,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins called the analysis the first of its kind as it compared state laws on police use of lethal force with international laws, particularly the United Nations principle of limiting lethal use of force to “unavoidable” instances “in order to protect life” after “less extreme means” have proved insufficient.

Amnesty found that, in all cases, state written statutes were too broad to be in compliance with these international standards, concluding that “none of the laws establish the requirement that lethal force may only be used as a last resort with non-violent means and less harmful means to be tried first. The vast majority of laws do not require officers to give a warning of their intent to use firearms.”

The comes just weeks after the recommendations of Barack Obama’s police taskforce were criticized for not doing anything substantive to prevent police violence. Obama’s commission found that “not only should there be policies for deadly and non-deadly uses of force”, but that a “clearly stated ‘sanctity of life’ philosophy must also be in the forefront of every officer’s mind”.

The ‘sanctity of life’ philosophy is an internationally recognized principle for the treatment of human life by militaries and law enforcement around the world.

The Amnesty review found only eight states that require a verbal warning to be issued before an officer uses lethal force.

In fact, nine states – Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Wisconsin – have no law enforcement lethal force statutes at all.

“Those states can of course argue that they follow common law or supreme court standards, but is that good enough?” Hawkins stated. “Certainly we would expect that international human rights standards are what should govern and our fear is that, unless these are clearly quantified, a citizen in any state can’t look at what the law is. That’s critically important to ensuring accountability.”

Amnesty’s report advocates for UN international standards to be applied to all fatal incidents involving law enforcement, which would mean mandatory reporting of lethal incidents and impartial investigations into each and every one.

The federal government does not track these incidents, relying on the the FBI-run voluntary program where law enforcement choose to submit a number of “justifiable homicides” each year.

Yet because the system is optional, most departments submit only partial statistics and re-classify incidents to avoid public scrutiny and the associated costs.

New Data Shows Android Powered Smartphones Dominating Global Market

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A new survey of real-time smartphone usage has confirmed both that Android dominates the global smartphone market and that its usage is heavily influenced by how much money users have.

Android’s close ties to the spending power of a particular market means it dominates in low-income countries, but see less usage in high-income markets.

Apple, by contrast, does the opposite.

For example, Android has 92.25 percent – basically all – of the Egyptian smartphone market, which is ranked 120th in worldwide GDP per capita. In India, with a GDP rank of 142, Android controls 88.71 percent of the market.

Yet in Taiwan, Google takes just 20.14 percent share and under 32 percent in Denmark Sweden, Norway and Australia.

51Degrees, which does device detection for website operators, compiled the figures, which were gathered by monitoring web usage in retail.

Real-time usage is generally considered to be a more accurate reflection of what people are actually using, rather than shipments of new devices in a particular market.

Thanks to global income inequality Android smartphones account for four out of five devices sold in the world.

Apple in turn takes its profits from just the thirty richest economies in the world while dominating in the top ten richest.

$549 for the cheapest Apple phone mean it is beyond the reach of many Chinese, which remains 89th in the global ranking of GDP per capita.

In theory, both Apple and Google shouldn’t care. One takes lower profit and high volume, while the other takes much more profit but sells fewer devices.

Yet both could be easily upended by Chinese rivals, as we’ve covered here, who are coming on fast and don’t play by the standard rules of the market.

Ebay Sells Ownership Stake In Craigslist, Drops Lawsuit

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In a complete about-face, online auction giant eBay is selling its 28.4 percent stake in local classified ad market Craigslist and, as an added bonus, is dropping its legal action against its former investment.

eBay bought its Craigslist stake back in 2004 for $32 million. The move was questioned because unlike profit-hungry eBay Craigslist deliberately keeps revenues low due to the personal beliefs of management.

The story got weirder still as a year after the purchase, eBay launched its own classified community website, originally named Kijiji and now called eBay Classifieds.

The decision to launch a rival marketplace was understandably not well received by Craigslist, which saw the move as an effort to cannibalize its business.

eBay’s aggressive marketing tactics didn’t help, either. The auction house bought “Craigslist” as a Google AdWords keyword, which redirected users to Kijiji.

Then, in 2008, eBay sued Craigslist, claiming that the company had diluted its ownership stake in order to keep eBay executives off the board of directors. Craigslist then counter-sued, claiming that eBay had put Kijiji executives in its company to steal trade secrets.

eBay obtained a partial victory two years later, when a court ruled that Craigslist had diluted its shareholding, but the court also ruled that eBay didn’t have a right to put its people on the board.

But the story is still far from over.

In 2011 a federal investigation was launched into eBay’s conduct surounding the deal, specifically investigating allegations that eBay has been stealing Craigslist’s confidential information in order to create the rival Kijiji business. At present no results of the investigation have been announced.

As of Friday of this week, all litigation between the two companies has now ended, with Craigslist back in private ownership.

eBay hasn’t disclosed how much it received for the stake, and Craigslist isn’t commenting either, but confirmed the sale, in typical Craigslist fashion, with a quirky Shakespeare quote from All’s well that ends well.

The federal probe into eBay’s behavior is still ongoing, though no timetable for a conclusion has been given at this point.

Study Finds Watching Cat Videos Actually Has Health Benefits

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It’s official – watching cat videos is good for your overall well being, according to an Indiana University study published in the latest edition of Computers and Human Behavior journal.

Professor Jessica Myrick headed the study which set out to quantify the behavioral effect of exposure to cat videos online by surveying consumers of Internet cat content, looking to find motivation and detect emotion. She also tested a new model of how procrastination, guilt, happiness, and enjoyment are interrelated when it comes to our guilty pleasures on the Internet.

The 6795 study participants were self-confessed Internet cat content watchers —the majority women (88.4 percent) and white (90.4 percent).

This group on average watched cat videos or looked at cat pictures almost every day, and owned on average of 2.3 cats each . Questions designed to assess participants personality traits showed the majority were introverts and shy – but also happy, at least, when asked to look back two weeks.

The study found that watching cat videos online may well have contributed to this general happiness. Participants reported that after watching cats on-line they experienced a decrease in negative emotions—annoyance, anxiety, sadness, guilt, as well an increase in positive emotions -hope, happiness, contentment.

As for the procrastinators motivations – Myrick’s found that although procrastinators felt guilt after watching videos of cats knocking over things on desks things etc , when they should have been working, that was offset by the pleasure experienced.

Although the study was aimed at the effects of watching cast on-line, participants were also getting regular—but less frequent exposure to dogs and other animals online.

So those cute cat videos aren’t just a mindless distraction after all – they’re actually helping your health!

Superpowers Still Clinging To Secrecy As Julian Assange Marks Third Year Inside Ecuadorian Embassy

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This weekend marked three years since Julian Assange slipped into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, England, claiming political asylum. Already a strong supporter of rights and transparency, the president of the Ecuador has now said Mr Assange is welcome to stay for the rest of his life, should he need to.

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa said over the weekend that Assange hadn’t overstayed his welcome. Correa also spoke sharply about the police guard that is keeping Assange inside the London embassy’s grounds.

“If we had a European refugee in a European embassy in Quito, if we were to keep him three years without letting him stay, we would be called dictators, fascists,” Correa said to Euronews. “We would be brought in front of the International Criminal Court.”

Assange, founder of leading transparency website Wikileaks, is likely grateful for the support yet still hopes to obtain his freedom given the long and uncomfortable confinement that has been just slightly better than being in prison. Assange is currently hiding out to avoid an investigation into suspicious sexual misconduct charges in Sweden, which are likely a ploy to get him in jail for hosting a slew of documents concerning the secret affairs of the world’s superpowers.

Despite Swedish authorities being welcome to question Assange and complete their investigation inside the embassy itself, they have bowed to international pressure from the United States and United Kingdom and failed to do, trapping Assange. Earlier this week the Swedes were supposed to visit him for an interview but they backed out at the last minute due to political interference.

Police officers continue to watch the embassy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. London’s Metropolitan Police told a local broadcaster that the cost of keeping him confined over the last three years was a stunning $17.6 million.

Clearly, world superpowers do not like the idea of regular citizens knowing what they do. A recent example is the super-secret gift to corporations known as the Trans Pacific Partnership, a ‘trade agreement’ that President Obama is trying to entirely negotiate in secret.

Wikileaks has been the only organization to find and publish advanced copies of the shady deal, which we’ve covered here and here.

Researchers Find Sixth Mass Extinction Likely Underway

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When the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, the event is referred to by scientists as Earth’s fifth mass extinction, the fifth such event in our planet’s history. According to new research published in Science Advances a sixth mass extinction may well be underway and this time it is likely being caused by humans.

Previous mass die-offs of animals and plants were caused by large-scale natural disasters like meteors or multiple large volcanic eruptions. Such events killed between half and 96 percent of all living species within a relatively short amount of time.

This time, the researchers say, its being caused by man made changes to the environment including global-warming, poaching, deforestation and over-fishing.

Recent studies from around the world confirm hundreds of species are believed to have become extinct, such as the Desert Rat Kangaroo, the Emperor Rat, the Chinese Paddlefish, the Yangtze River Dolphin and the Skunk Frog, among countless others.

Gerardo Ceballos, senior ecological researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Anthony Barnosky, a biology professor at Berkeley conducted research that found 477 vertebrate species have gone extinct since 1900, an extremely short period of time given our planet’s long history.

Their model, based on fossil evidence, found that there should have only been nine species going extinct during the same time period if humans were not the primary cause of those extinctions.

The researchers fear that within just two generations’ time 75 percent of the species we know today could disappear forever.

While “we have the potential for making massive change, the bottom line is that we can’t be the generation responsible for wiping out three-fourths of life forms on the Earth,” said Barnosky.

The diversity of wildlife on our planet provides critical functions, such as keeping air in the atmosphere and purifying drinking water, with life as we know it depending on having this diversity, the authors said.

“People think nothing bad will come from species loss, because scientists can’t predict exactly how many need to go extinct before the world collapses,” says Ceballos. “The problem is that our environment is like a brick wall. It will hold if you pull individual bricks, but eventually it takes just one to make it suddenly fall apart.”

While the process of extinction is a natural part of the Earth’s life giving process, the research marks the first time there is evidence humans of species loss at rates that are 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the natural, historic rate of species decline.

The researchers say that its well within our power to change things, but action needs to happen quickly. They point to problems like pollution, deforestation, poaching and garbage in the oceans as simple things we can stop doing that will ensure the world’s species stop dying off and our planet remains healthy for future generations.

Clinton Exploits Charleston Shooting To Push Curb On Second Amendment Rights

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Hillary Clinton spoke Saturday, using an emotional speech laced with racial sympathies to push for gun control laws in the wake of the Charleston, South Carolina church massacre earlier this week.

Invoking civil rights leaders and the Bible, Clinton told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco that as “tempting” as it is to isolate the Charleston shooting as random, “America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.”

“I know this is a difficult topic to talk about,” she stated. “I know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black President we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we don’t like to say out loud in discussions with our children, but we have to. That is the only way we can possibly move forward together.”

Referencing a host of statistics such as mortgage rates and the incidence of asthma in black children, Clinton stated that “race remains a deep fault line in America and millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives.”

The massacre in Charleston, with its overtly racist motive, has led to a national media debate about race and guns, and the former secretary of state politically danced, saying that the debate one was both poisoned by politics but too important to avoid.

“We must tackle this challenge with urgency and conviction,” she said.

“I lived in Arkansas and I represented upstate New York. I know that gun ownership is part of the fabric of a lot of law abiding communities,” Clinton said. “I also know that we can have common sense gun reforms that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the violently unstable while respecting responsible gun owners.”

While typically vague and open ended, Clinton’s statement shows she would likely use tragedies like Charleston as to push for national firearms restrictions if the opportunity presented itself.

Desperate Russia Kicks Around Moon Landing Conspiracies To Deflect FIFA Scandal Questions

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Grasping at conspiracy theory straws, Russia’s Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin has called for an international investigation into what he claims are murky details surrounding the U.S. moon landings between 1969 and 1972.

The call appears to be a desperate attempt by Markin to deflect attention from questions stemming from a large-scale corruption probe targeting nine FIFA officials which includes whether they and other officials received bribes for helping Russia win its bid for the 2018 World Cup.

In a column he wrote for the Izvestia newspaper, Markin said U.S. authorities had overstepped boundaries by launching the FIFA corruption probe which lead to the recent resignation of longtime FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Accusing U.S. prosecutors of “having declared themselves the supreme arbiters of international football affairs,” Markin suggested international investigators could similarly examine some of the murkier elements of America’s past.

He wrote that such an investigation could help solve the mystery of the disappearance of film footage from the original moon landing in 1969, and find out where the nearly 400 kilograms of lunar rock reportedly obtained during several space missions between 1969 and 1972 is.
“We are not contending that they did not fly [to the moon], and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened,” Markin wrote.

NASA admitted in 2009 that original film of the first moon landing had been erased, but said it had managed to re-master the original television broadcast of the landing.

The bulk of moon rock reportedly brought back to earth during manned U.S. moon landings is stored in the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Texas, though there are samples in various museums around the world.

Canadian Government Joins U.S., Germany In Being Hacked This Year

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The Canadian Government has fallen victim to an activist-related hacking attack, joining a growing list of world governments that have fallen victim to hack attacks this year alone. The ruling Conservative government has been accused of being lazy with fighting cybercrime following its admission that its servers had been hacked.

The admission from Treasury Board President Tony Clement came after hacking collective Anonymous claimed on its Twitter account, it had shut down government websites in a protest against a controversial bill passed recently by both the Canadian House of Commons and the Senate.

Anonymous also posted a YouTube video in which it said it had targeted the Canadian Government for passing Bill C-51 which it described as a “clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” .

The Bill lowers the burden of proof needed to brand someone a national security threat, meaning easier “lawful” arrest and surveillance of people suspected of being threats to Canada’s national security.

While Canada’s Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney played the heavy saying those responsible for the hacks will have to face the full force of the law”, the opposition National Democrats Party’s (NPC) said playing tough now was too late.

Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NPC’s deputy critic for public safety, accused the Government of being lazy with fighting cyber crime.

“Our allies are much further ahead of us in terms of cyber security,’ she said citing criticism of the Government in 2012 by the Auditor General for not having 24/7 cyber security surveillance.

10 Celebrity Diets That Are Actually Shown To Get Results

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10 Celebrity Diets That Are Actually Shown To Get Results

Adriana Lima

The way our bodies look are a big deal and its an even bigger deal for celebrities, who are under the spotlight 24/7. While you shouldn’t trust everything you hear from celebrities, they definitely take their eating seriously. We looked at some of the best celebrity eaters and came up with a list of 10 different celebrity diets that actually get results, if you follow them closely.

There’s no magic secrets here but there are great tips and tricks to eat better and eat the foods that are right for your individual body and your life.

10 Strange Unsolved American Hospital Mysteries

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10 Strange Unsolved American Hospital Mysteries

Hospitals are supposed to be a safe place, where you can recover from an injury or otherwise get help. But they can also make you feel alone and helpless, sometimes with good reason.

Over the years many different mysteries have happened in hospitals. Some are creepy and tragic, while others are just miracles of life or completely unexplained. At first couldn’t believe a few of these could happen and as we dug deeper things got stranger still. So strange, in fact, we just had to share ten of strangest of them with our readers!

 

Australian Police Latest To Want Warrantless Access To Personal Financial Data

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In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), police are pushing for new powers that circumvent the checks and balances of the legal system, highlighting a worldwide trend in lazy policing that seeks to make police work easier while fundamentally removing essential oversight that keeps the justice system fair.

Under a police proposal currently before the government, the NSW Police Force would no longer require a judge’s sign-off to gain access to the bank statements of people they merely suspect of engaging in criminal conduct.

The proposal would eliminate the requirement for a magistrate or registrar of a court to sign off on a “notice to produce” before police can compel banking institutions to hand over documentation, such as a suspected criminal’s bank statements.

More worryingly, the latest attempt at making police jobs easier is being disingenuously claimed as a requirement of Australia’s new data retention laws.

The head of NSW Police’s Fraud and Cyber Crime Squad likened the proposal to the way telecommunications metadata is sought from telecom companies, which requires only the sign-off a senior officer before companies.

The statement is worrying, as if police begin to use bank data they way they abuse metadata, every citizen’s bank account information will end up in an easily searchable police database, which can be used any way police like.

In addition to be a shining example of lazy policing, where police simply want to remove legal safeguards to their activities the Australian case also demonstrates the slippery slope of warrantless access

Once warrantless access to personal data is used in one sphere, people in other areas begin pushing for warrantless access as well.

UK Government Caught Deleting Records Just Days Before New Freedom Of Information Act Took Effect

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Just weeks before the United Kingdom, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, adopted a Freedom of Information (FOI) act, the Prime Minister’s office conveniently adopted a policy of its own: Automatically deleting emails more than three months old.

In what government accountability campaigners have described as “not a coincidence,” the resulting system descended into a “dysfunctional” mess, according to those who worked uder it.

The system to bypass public accountability is still in place. Under the likely-illegal policy, workers can only retain email beyond three months if they specifically move it out of their inbox and into an official archive, usually accomplished by dragging it, or a copy, into local storage on the user’s computer.

Former special adviser to Nick Clegg Sean Kemp described how staffers now “delete their emails on an almost daily basis, others just try to avoid putting anything potentially interesting in an email in the first place.”

A special adviser told the Financial Times that the policy caused confusion, with senior officials reporting to IT staffers that their emails kept ‘disappearing,’ yet this was precisely the intent.

Staff were also unable to agree on the details of meetings which vanished due to automatic deletion. One former Downing Street official described the problem as “hugely frustrating.”

The director of the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information Maurice Frankel said that the fact the policy was instituted only a few days before the FOI Act came into law in January 2005 indicates that the timing “very strongly indicates that it was not a coincidence.”

Politicians hiding their dirty dealings from the public is nothing new, with President Obama’s administration doing the very same thing in March of this year, when it excluded the White House from FOIA regulations, outraging transparency campaigners.

Mr. Obama, who promised greater transparency for the President’s office yet ran the most secretive administration in the history of the United States, and his UK counterpart Tony Blair, view Freedom of Information requests as a “weapon” for journalists, according to sources.

It remains unclear as to just how, exactly, they would like to be accountable to their citizens, if at all.

Boeing Feels Tensions With Russia As State Carrier Cuts Plane Order

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Boeing Feels Tensions With Russia As State Carrier Cuts Plane Order

Russian national airline Aeroflot, in a politically charged move, announced on Thursday that it has cancelled its order for 22 Boeing 787 airliners. The message was delivered by the carrier’s deputy general director for strategy and alliances Giorgio Callegari.

“We have exercised our option to terminate the contract on the 787,” he said at the Paris International Air Show on Thursday.

The airline executive said the decision was based on analysis of “capacity at the Sheremetyevo airport” and the “sustainability of the fleet development – sustainability in terms of the right mix of widebodies and narrowbodies and network development.”

According to Callegari, Aeroflot is “confident that we can meet the original targets” set by the airline’s board “in terms of volumes of passengers, the size of the company and the performance of the company, by shaping our fleet and network in a more attractive way”.

Aeroflot is the largest airline in Russia and had 22 787s on order from the manufacturer. Callegari says Aeroflot did not incur a financial penalty from Boeing for the cancellation and the decision, he added, “was not a one-day process, but taken in due course and discussed with the relevant stakeholders and counterparts.”

Yet the move is the latest in a global tit-for-tat between an increasingly erratic Russia and western countries, who are growing impatient with dictator Vladimir Putin’s communist ambitions.

The country invaded Ukraine in early 2015, earning widespread condemnation from the international community and biting sanction that, along with low oil prices, have wreaked havoc on the Russian economy.

Russia has tried to further distance itself economically, in an ego-driven quest to one-up America. The cancellation of the aircraft order is clearly being used to achieve this goal, although the final outcome remains questionable given the 787 is the most efficient jet is in its class and using planes from rival Airbus will put the Russian flag carrier at a competitive disadvantage.

While there was no official confirmation that the order cancellation was politically motivated, it could also indicate financial pressure on the airline. Aeroflot has one of the worst safety records in the world, accounting for seven of the top 100 deadliest crashes in recent history. Its poor safety record combined with a struggling Russian economy could be another reason for pulling the order.

Deadly MERS Virus Reaches Thailand

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Thailand’s Public Health Minister Rajata Rajatanavin officially confirmed its first case of MERS on Friday, as the highly contagious virus continued to spread further from the Middle East into eastern Asia.

The Health Minister said a man was diagnosed with MERS after he traveled to Thailand from a Middle Eastern country on June 15th.

He was in stable condition as of FRiday and was being treated in a private hospital in Bangkok.

The Thai case marks the 26th country with confirmed Middle East respiratory syndrome cases since the disease was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

The patient was a medical tourist who had traveled to Thailand to receive treatment for heart disease. It was not disclosed what country the man comes from or had recently visited.

The 10 Rich Teens and Where They are Now

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The 10 Rich Teens and Where They are Now

 

richkids

 

There are people under the age of 18 that probably have more money than you’re going to see for quite some time, but that’s fine; it’s usually how it works for a lot of us. This list is going to look at 10 of the richest teens (as in under the age of 18) within America, as well as a few other places.

The World Just Isn’t Giving Peace a Chance

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The world is less peaceful today than it was in 2008 according to the annual Global Peace Index report produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The report, which measures the state of peace in 162 countries by using 23 indicators that measure the absence of violence or the fear of violence, shows that although worldwide peace levels were stable this year, the division between countries enjoying peace and those afflicted by conflict has increased.

Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace said “2014 was marked by contradictory trends: on the one hand many countries in the OECD achieved historically high levels of peace, while on the other, strife-torn nations, especially in the Middle East, became more violent. This is a real concern as these conflicts become even more intractable they spread terrorism to other states”.

According to the report there have only been two improved indicators over the last eight years – United Nations peacekeeping funding has increased and the number of deaths from external conflicts had fallen to 410 from 1,982 to 410.

“The indicators that have deteriorated the most are the number of refugees and [internally displaced persons], and the number of deaths from internal conflict and the impact of terrorism,” reads the report showing “last year alone it is estimated that 20,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks up from an average of 2,000 a year only 10 years ago,”.

Other notable findings of the report were:

Since 2014, 81 countries have become more peaceful while 78 have become less peaceful.

The total economic impact of violence in 2014 reached $14 trillion – approximately 13 percent of the global gross domestic product.

Europe is the world’s most peaceful region, with 15 of the 20 most peaceful countries residing there.

Egypt, Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea-Bissau were the countries with the best improvement in peace.

Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are the world’s least peaceful countries.
The countries where peace deteriorated the most were Libya, which now ranks 149th out of 162 countries, and Ukraine, 150th.

Due to an increase in civil unrest and terrorist activity, the Middle East and North Africa is now the world’s least peaceful region for the first time since 2007.

Globally the intensity of internal armed conflict has increased dramatically, with the number of people killed in conflicts rising over 3.5 times from 49,000 in 2010 to 180,000 in 2014.

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