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Iran To Take Legal Action If U.S. Blocks Jet Liner Sale

Iran has threatened to take legal action if the United States tries to prevent its newly acquired passenger planes from flying international routes, the head of the nation’s aviation authority said on Tuesday.

Iran’s state airline, Mahan Air, is blacklisted by Washington. Yet in May it bought eight used Airbus A340s and one Airbus A321 in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported last week that Mahan Air intended to use them on international routes.

The U.S. Treasury department ruled last month that Mahan Air had a “blockable interest” in the planes, which means they would be subject to an asset freeze. This means that Washington may attempt to have them confiscated at airports outside Iran.

“As long as a disruption has not taken place, we cannot make a definite assertion. But if it happens, Iran will take legal action,” said the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Alireza Jahangirian.

“America does not have the right to stop our planes on international trips. Under international laws, it is impossible to seize the new Iranian aircraft.”

In addition to Mahan Air itself, the U.S. Treasury department has imposed sanctions on two firms in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates for assisting with the purchase.

Iran expects the new planes to join its aviation fleet “in the coming weeks”, once their documentation has come through.

News agency Fars, possibly floating a trial balloon on behalf of the government, reported that the four-engined A340s would start flying from Tehran to Dubai and Istanbul. It would later use them on long-haul routes, though it did not elaborate which, possibly for fear of U.S. interdiction.

Iran needs to fly the four engine A340 because the country lacks the approvals needed to fly two-engined aircraft on long-haul routes to developed countries, following years of isolation in the global aviation market.

Developed countries require well documented safety records and aircraft paperwork in order to fly over their airspace. Iran is currently banned from doing so when flying two engined planes.

Sanctions for its nuclear program, leveled by the United State, European Union and others ban the sale of aircraft and parts to Iran.

As a result of the sanctions and old aircraft, Iran’s airlines have one of the worst safety records in the world. Its 189 active passenger aircraft have an average age of 22 years.

New Nielsen Research Confirms It: Streaming Services Are Priced Way Too High

While you can’t blame the companies for trying, new research shows what we reported last week: Consumers just don’t want to pay very much for online streaming.

Released just as Apple finished unveiling Apple Music, Nielsen’s extensive report examined the state of Canada’s music industry. While not the United States, its a very accurate proxy.

The Nielsen Music 360 report looked at, among other things, how much people are willing to pay for online music streaming services. They surveyed about 3500 people and concluded that the average person is willing to pay between $5.50 and $6.30 USD a month to listen to an unlimited amount of songs.

That’s well short of the industry standard $9.99.

This supports the popularity of Spotify’s free ad-supported tier, the least expensive option currently available.

The findings are interesting, given Spotify is under constant pressure from music labels to do away with its free tier or stop “giving so many songs away.”

Yet once again big content providers don’t get it, and are insisting on using technology to give consumers a worse deal than they already have. Radio is, after all, free.

Rdio CEO Anthony Bay said in an interview that “the challenge with the $9.99 price point is it’s more than most people have historically spent on music.”

Which makes for an interesting dilemma, as since Nielsen started tracking streaming usage last July, streaming volume has gone up by 94 per cent.

This perhaps points to more innovation in the space in order to come up with a model that pleases both consumers and big record labels.

While each service will have to struggle with what plan to offer consumers, one thing is clear from the report: People won’t be paying for multiple services.

The idea someone would have both a Pandora and Apple Music subscription just won’t happen. In music streaming it will be a winner take all game, where consumers will have just one service and stick to it.

It will be interesting to see data on how consumers feel about TV streaming. The web TV industry currently wants users to maintain 5-10 subscriptions to get cable-like service, without live sports and with the $100 or so per month cable price tag.

If consumers feel about web TV as they do about streaming music, the thought they will buy five or more subscriptions is delusional.

Which bodes extremely well for Netflix and nobody else.

ISIS Is Now Using An Ancient Tunnel Bombing Technique

A deadly modern upgrade to an ancient tactic is emerging as a potent new weapon in Syria, where terror group ISIS has used them to blow up several buildings, it emerged this week. The simple yet effective technique was also used by the group to take the Iraqi city of Ramadi, according to Pentagon officials.

It is a simple enough concept: Dig a tunnel under your target, plant explosives, and press the detonator.

According to the Pentagon organization that studies improvised explosive devices, JIEDDO, at least 45 such devices have been used in the past two years in Iraq and Syria. While most have been used in Syria, U.S. officials say ISIS is building “a network of bunkers, trenches and tunnels” inside Iraq.

“This below the surface attack is particularly destructive to buildings and is appearing increasingly in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria,” according to a recent JIEDDO briefing.

While tunnels are common in war zones, such as as Vietnam, they continue to be used in modern times, most notably by Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza. Yet those tunnels have mostly been used for transportation. In Vietnam they served as underground highways and places to live, while in Gaza they are generally used to smuggle weapons and launch attacks against Israel.

ISIS, however, is using tunnel bombs against military checkpoints, buildings and other fortified facilities. It takes less than 30 days to dig a short tunnel, while ones that reach a mile long may take up to nine months, according to JIEDDO.

“The use of tunnels for IEDs and other purposes will continue to provide a low risk strategic advantage to extremist organizations and therefore requires continued development efforts and fielding of effective mitigation techniques,” the JIEDDO report said.

In modern war video footage of buildings collapsing, with massive plumes of smoke and debris flying hundreds of feet into the air, are almost as valuable as destroying the target. ISIS frequently posts such dramatic videos to social media, where they generate significant buzz.

“As part of an information operations campaign, these attacks are documented and widely proliferated via social media which increases the likelihood of migration to other conflict areas or adoption by other extremist organizations on a worldwide basis,” JIEDDO says, illustrating that viral videos can lead to the viral spread of terror tactics.

In Syria, rebels have dug tunnels with hand tools to avoid detection. Their targets have been mainly government forces in small attacks.

In Iraq, ISIS has become a heavy user of tunnel bombs, notably to devastating effect in their assault on Ramadi.

A March 11th tunnel bomb under an Iraqi army headquarters killed 22 people. According to the JIEDDO briefing on the matter the blast consumed an estimated seven tons of explosives. The tunnel was 800 feet long and took two months to dig.

But ISIS isn’t just using tunnels for explosives. They’re also using them to stealthily move weapons away from the prying eyes of U.S. drones and fighter jets. They have also likely begun using Saddam Hussein’s legendary network of tunnels, which stretched over 60 miles.

Pentagon planners are now looking to the oil and gas industry for help on ways to detect tunnels. The industry uses seismology to survey the ground and understand the composition of material below the surface. Defense planners are studying which approaches they can roll out to pilots in the region to help them quickly and effectively locate ISIS tunnels.

Yet there’s no certain solution to the problem. Tunnels under city centers will always be difficult to find and tunnels under open areas don’t generally exist.

What is certain is that ISIS will continue to use the tactic, recognizing that it makes life difficult for American forces and also makes for a devastating weapon of war.

The PetroYuan Is Born As Russia Dramatically Ramps Crude Oil Sales To China

It seems world sanctions against Russia are working and yet at the same time they are having an unintended effect: Pushing Russia to increasingly use the Chinese renminbi as its currency of choice.

The fact Russia’s third-largest oil producer is now settling all of its sales to China in renminbi is perhaps the most clear indication yet that western sanctions are both working and driving an increase in the use of the Chinese currency by Russian companies.

The Kremlin’s “pivot to Asia” foreign policy, in response to western sanctions, has basically mandated a shift from the U.S. dollar to renminbi but until now there has been little clarity over just how much trade can actually be settled in the Chinese currency.

Gazprom Neft, the third largest oil producer in the country, announced on Friday that since the start of 2015 it had been selling in renminbi all of its oil for export down the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline to China.

Up until last summer this contract had been settled in U.S. dollars.

Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of state owned Gazprom, responded faster than most. Alexander Dyukov, chief executive officer, announced in April last year that the company had secured agreement from 95 percent of its customers to settle transactions in euros rather than dollars, should they need to.

That statement, while obviously in retaliation for sanctions, was ambiguous as it only alluded to the fact this switch could be made and not that it had been made.

We now know the full extent of that switch. Gazprom Neft’s first-quarter results, issued last month, show the East Siberian Pacific Ocean pipeline accounted for 37.2 percent of the company’s crude oil exports of 1.6 million tons in the three months to March 31st.

That, to many experts, marks the rise of the “PetroYuan”.

According to influential financial newspaper FT, “other Russian energy groups have been more reluctant to drop the dollar for settlement of oil sales,” but the fact other Russian producers are currently considering a shift combined with officials in the U.S. and Europe openly discussing yet more economic sanctions all suggests that the settlements in renminbi will become more prevalent going forward.

This becomes even more fascinating when examining the latest Chinese crude oil import data, which shows their import of OPEC crude is falling dramatically while Russian crude is increasingly dramatically. Venezuela imports were down 11 percent while Saudi crude imports were down 8 percent. Russian imports soared 34 percent.

Just as Russian oil is rising as a percentage of total Chinese crude imports, these contracts are now being settled in renminbi.

The timing gets even more interesting as China is making a big push to only issue loans from its new investment bank (and IMF rival) in renminbi.

In short, China is now making a big push to rival the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It won’t happen overnight, but large trade volumes are increasingly being done in Yuan, negatively affecting the value of the U.S. dollar.

Rise Of The Chinese Tech Titans Continues As Search Giant Baidu Announces Self Driving Car

Baidu, the Google of China, is literally working on its own versions of just about every core product Google has or has in the pipeline. It does search, it does maps and now its doing self driving cars.

China’s largest search company confirmed that it would debut its autonomous car prototype in China in the second quarter of 2015, an announcement which comes on the heels of a recent string of partnerships with German car companies to power their car infotainment systems in China. The announcement was delivered by Wanf Jin, Baidu’s Vice President of Tech and Strategy, at the 2015 China Cloud Computing Conference.

Jin did not reveal who will make the cars but the technology will make use of the search company’s mapping services, big data and research conducted by its special projects division Baidu Institute of Deep Learning or ‘Baidu brain’ as its known inside the company. The group’s self driving car program has focused on improving the passenger experience while on Beijing’s highways.

Baidu’s first iteration of self-driving cars will have a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, which is similar to Google’s fleet of Lexus SUVs it uses for testing.

It remains unclear just how far along the technology is, as Google envisions production models not actually having manual controls of any sort.

Baidu, for the moment, is eyeing self-driving cars that do not totally take the human driver out of the equation, but rather help give them some freedom. The system would work similar to an aircraft’s auto-pilot system rather than a whole new way of getting around.

BMW way be the manufacturer selected, as the company announced last July a partnership involving driverless technology.

While the announcement sounds more humble than Google’s radical plans, make no mistake: Baidu is eyeing driverless passenger cars that operate as convenient taxi services just as much as Google is.

But in typical Chinese fashion its playing its hand slowly and not showing the world too much. At least not yet.

Facebook Announces Latest Tracking Scheme: Spam You At Retail Stores

In the latest example of a solution looking for a problem, Facebook announced on Monday that its Place Tips program is expanding nationwide.

Place Tips uses Bluetooth beacons to push Facebook posts and photos about a business to shoppers’ phones while they’re in the store.

In short, you will now be spammed by useless content as you wait in line to buy your Starbucks.

Just why you would want to know more about your local coffee shop through this mobile spamming isn’t quite clear. It also remains to be seen why a business would want to give you useful items, like a coupon, if you’re already in the store.

But for those in the know, its obvious what is going: Tracking.

By pushing you useless junk, Facebook has an excuse to collect data about you. In-store or retail analytics is a hot new technology, which allows retailers to track and trace you as you wander around or past a store. If you have a mobile phone, they pick it up and track you.

But existing systems don’t connect to Facebook, which knows the most about you of any big internet company.

Facebook’s new plan pushes you junk and requires you to accept that junk. Once you do, Facebook can now associate the formerly anonymous data with your Facebook life.

As you then walk around town, entering or passing by other Facebook-enabled stores, the privacy invader will track you.

Accept once, get tracked forever.

The program started at a few select retailers in New York City in January, and is now available to all businesses in the United State.

In a sign you, and your personal information, are most definitely the product, Facebook will give the tracking beacons away to retailers for free.

As we’ve said before, beware billionaires bearing gifts. If its free and asks for information its not the product.

You are.

Facebook gave no details on how users might opt out of the program, whether they have accepted a spam request or not.

CNN Thinks It Is “Courageous” To Present Advertiser Content As News

Big media companies, with deep connections to powerful corporations, are always looking for more ad dollars. They’re also deathly afraid of existing ad dollars getting pulled. They routinely spike stories, distort coverage and re-purpose facts to ensure their advertisers are portrayed in the best light possible.

Basically they do the opposite of what we do at Americans.org.

But their current verbal acrobatics isn’t enough, as media giant CNN announced on Tuesday the formation of a new unit that won’t report the news but will instead take money from corporations and produce content that is confusingly similar to news but is actually PR for its clients.

The name of this slimy new unit? “Courageous.”

Seriously.

CNN‘s foray into “news-like content on behalf of advertisers” is the latest in a trend of “news companies from the New York Times to BuzzFeed to the Wall Street Journal having units that create advertiser content,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s own marketing blog.

The Journal‘s Steven Perlberg notes, “These undertakings often raise church-and-state questions about the divide between the editorial and business sides of a company.”

We’ve dealt with this exact issue here at Americans.org. Native advertising, where sponsors present editorial content, is a great way for an operation like us to make money. But it can also be slimy, especially if we’re the ones doing the writing.

Would you trust anything we ever said if we wrote both for Toyota and about Toyota air bag recalls?

Probably not.

CNN claims that advertisers will come to Courageous because of CNN‘s “trustworthiness” and unwillingness to “blur the lines.”

Yet this is a business strategy that only works if the similarity of marketing content outweighs the differentiation.

Which is why we have a policy that we will never write advertiser content. Ever.

We also won’t sell ads directly to advertisers for native ads. We think that even having a direct relationship with an advertiser is enough to corrupt our editorial process and so we won’t do it.

Instead we only run ads through third parties and never know which ad is biggest or best on our site. If an advertiser wants to show up on our site, they place their order with our third party. If they want to pull their ads, they do it with them.

Through this whole process we see nothing and know nothing.

We keep publishing our honest opinion of American and world news. You keep getting great, unbiased, coverage of what’s important each day.

We label all our ads, so you know what is sponsored and what is news coverage.

If we ever change this policy feel free to throw this article in our face. But we firmly believe in being as independent as possible from our advertisers and would never pull a big media company move like writing stories about advertisers.

You have our word.

United Nations Leaves Israel Off List Of Child Killing States Despite It Killing Over 500 Children A Year

While the world continues to expose Israel’s campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people, the United Nations continues to turn a blind eye. This willful ignorance was highlighted on Tuesday as the UN’s latest list of parties that kill or injure children in armed conflict failed to include Israel, despite numerous recommendations it be included.

As we pointed out a couple of days ago, Israel has killed over 1000 children in the last three years and over 500 last year alone. This number doesn’t count the number of women and innocent civilians either.

But for notoriously meek UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, 1000 dead children isn’t enough to classify a state as child killers. He just finds the behavior “unacceptable.”

The decision highlights Israel’s preferential relationship with world super powers, as UN special envoy for children in armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, had strongly recommended that both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian armed forces, be put on the report’s list of parties that recruit, use, kill, maim or commit acts of sexual violence against children.

The annual aims to name and shames governments and insurgent groups that lead to children’s rights being violated. It was established by the UN security council in August 2009, with the goal of taking “action”, which includes possible sanctions, against those that violate international law on the rights and protection of children in armed conflicts.

This year’s includes groups, both terrorists and government, in:

  • Afghanistan
  • Central African Republic
  • Congo
  • Iraq
  • Mali
  • Myanmar
  • Somalia
  • South Sudan
  • Sudan
  • Syria
  • Yemen
  • The report does mention Israel and “the state of Palestine” for “grave violations committed against children during armed conflict”. But it does not put them on the list for political and economic reasons, undermining the authenticity of the report.

    In Gaza, over 561 children, 557 Palestinians and 4 Israelis, were killed. A further 4,271 were injured, all but 22 of them Palestinians.

    Just how many children the UN would require to make the dubious list remains to be seen.

    The report is typical of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who has assumed a low profile at the United Nations and has failed to achieve any notable accomplishments despite being on the job for over nine years. Lack of a two state peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is seen as his greatest failure, given how close an agreement seemed when he took office.

    Why One Quarter Of Japanese Men Being Virgins Is No Laughing Matter

    Its tempting to think this headline is run of the mill internet click bait but a new survey revealing that a quarter of Japanese men are still virgins by their 30s is actually a very serious problem for the country. It also explains the Japanese obsession with robots.

    So many men in Japan are virgins that they have a special name: “yaramiso.” Yet the problem isn’t just virgins, its that people just aren’t having sex. Over 50 percent didn’t report having sex within the last year and 15 percent within five years, according to the Japan Times poll.

    While some may find this amusing, its very serious: Japan now has a declining birth rate and a shrinking population.

    Its population is also old and getting older. Currently 25 percent of its population is over 65 and this will climb to almost 40 percent by 2055.

    At the same time, its population will shrink 25 percent by 2055.

    Older people require care and by not having sex and making the associated babies, Japan faces a monumental crisis.

    It needs young people to care for the elderly.

    So much so that’s waging a two pronged war against the lack of sex: Relationship training for young Japanese and investing heavily in robots.

    One program, “Virgin Academia,” helps the “able-bodied” improve their understanding of sex, while teaching relationship skills.

    While sexual images are everywhere in Japan most people don’t talk about sex and relationships, owing to deep a cultural history of avoiding the topic.

    This shows given “Virgin Academia” is not widely accepted in Japan’s society. Its lectures on how to find a partner, and a three day boot camp featuring intercourse lessons has even been met with online protests and negative press. The backlash was so strong police eventually shut it down.

    Which is why academics in Japan are increasingly looking to robots to solve the pending demographic crisis. Japan is the world leader in robots, specifically focusing on service robots that perform tasks like dispense pills, diagnose medical conditions, assist people with walking and providing companionship.

    World Governments Force Activist Group To Pay Japan’s Illegal Whale Hunting Industry

    In what clearly shows the world is ruled by big money corporate interests, hard-line antiwhaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has bizarrely been forced to pay the illegal Japanese whaling industry $2.55 million for “damages”.

    Despite the whaling industry being illegal and despite Sea Shepherd being the only group in the world to fight the illegal slaughter, a U.S. court has nonetheless ruled that the group must pay the substantial sum.

    Facing possible jail time, the group now has no choice and has agreed to pay Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, a sham front company purporting to do “research whaling” but really just commercially fishing the whales into extinction.

    The “research” fishing started in 1987, immediately following an international moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan officially still defends whaling as a cultural tradition and is the world’s number one killer of marine mammals. In addition to its commercial whaling, it also conducts a yearly mass killing of endangered dolphins.

    The sham whaling company, along with Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, the provider of the vessels and crew for the illegal activities, sued Sea Shepherd in U.S. federal court in 2011 and the court issued an injunction against the protests in 2012.

    Sea Shepherd uses aggressive tactics like attempting to ram the whalers, throwing smoke bombs and dragging metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders to stop the illegal harvest of whales.

    Last December, in a ruling clearly all about money, Sea Shepherd was held in contempt of a U.S. injunction banning the conservation group from attacking the Japanese government-funded whaling fleet and approaching the fleet on the open sea.

    “Sea Shepherd does not agree with the Ninth Circuit [Court]’s holding that it was in contempt, but after more than two years of litigation, we are very pleased to be putting the contempt action behind us,” Sea Shepherd said on its website.

    Sea Shepherd is widely regarded as one of the most honest and effective environmental groups in the world. It specializes action-oriented tactics to stop activities which hurt the environment. It is supported by many notable donors including Bob Barker, Christian Bale, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Penn and even the Dalai Lama.

    Intel Releases Alert Over NSA Created Malware Infecting Its Harddrives

    Each month Intel releases a security bulletin to alert customers to trends in threats it is seeing to computer and smartphone users. This month’s report contained the usual list new criminal malware, trying to steal your identity, your bitcoins or your webcam selfies.

    But for the first time, the company reported on more advanced threats, which attack not just your operating system, but the low-level software, known as firmware, that runs your machine.

    Intel’s report flagged “persistent and virtually undetectable attacks” traced to a group of malware authors known as the Equation Group. These attacks are highly sophisticated, reprogramming hard disk drive and solid state drive firmware.

    The attacks make getting rid of the infection impossible, short of replacing the actual drive itself. Once infected by the Equation Group’s malware, the firmware reloads malware each time infected systems boot. The malware persists even if the drives are reformatted or the operating system is re-installed.

    Anti-virus security software can’t detect the infection, making it impossible to stop.

    Why this is interesting is that the Equation Group has been traced to elite units of the NSA, which has in turn been confirmation by former staffers.

    The Equation Group is the NSA.

    These are the same folks who carried out the successful Stuxnet attack which heavily damaged Iran’s nuclear program and the same folks who also tried a similar, unsuccessful, attack on North Korea.

    Vincent Weafer, senior vice president, McAfee Labs said “These Equation Group firmware attacks rank as some of the most sophisticated threats of their kind. While such malware has historically been deployed for highly-targeted attacks, enterprises should prepare themselves for the seemingly inevitable ‘off-the-shelf’ incarnations of such threats in the future.”

    In plain language, Intel (via its McAfee subsidiary) is warning businesses, hospitals and government agencies to be on the lookout for these attacks. They’re seeing more of them and its likely that China, Russia and other U.S. rivals will be using very similar methods.

    Given that virtually all smartphones are manufactured in China, its very likely many are infected with the same type of super-complex malware that Intel is seeing attack computer hard drives.

    Apple Releases First Android App, To Help Users Leave Android

    Apple and its CEOs have never been shy about their disdain for Android, the rival smartphone operating system created by Google.

    At virtually every press conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook takes at least one potshot at Android’s fragmentation or its poor app store monetization strategy.

    Of course Apple thinks everyone should be on an iPhone and couldn’t imagine any reason to not be using all Apple products.

    At yesterday’s yearly Apple pilgrimage, known as World Wide Developers Conference, Apple quietly announced that with the release of iOS9, it iPhone operating system, it will also release its first and only Android app.

    But this is hardly a peace offering, as the app’s sole purpose is to make it easy for users to back up contacts, calendar information, bookmarks, photos and videos, messages, mail accounts, wallpapers and installed apps, for transition to iPhone.

    Literally named ‘Move to iOS’, the app uploads all your information to iCloud, which will then transfer all your settings, contacts and even installed apps onto your brand new iPhone.

    As a final snub to Google, Apple will also happily accept Android phones for recycling at any of its retail locations.

    Interestingly, Apple will be releasing another app shortly for Android. It announced plans to release its Apple Music service to the Google-run platform, which is a first for the company.

    The moves suggest that as Google’s Android dominates market share, Apple is looking for subtle yet effective ways to migrate Android users to its platform. Apple Music is a good way to do this, as Apple will then have an Apple account will all personal details and billing information.

    From there its just a phone purchase and a ‘Move To iOS’ download away from making you a fully fledged Apple customer.

    New Security Research Shows Hackers Are Actively Infiltrating Hospital Medical Devices

    A shocking new report was published on Monday showing just how compromised America’s healthcare technology has become. After recent incidents involving Chinese hackers stealing patient information, security firm TrapX decided to look a little closer, specifically examining the actual medical devices used by hospitals on patients.

    A report released by the firm claims that attackers are actively using unprotected medical devices such as radiologic (x-ray) systems, to maintain a foothold on healthcare networks. These machines receive less scrutiny from anti-virus software and IT departments, making them ideal staging areas for sophisticated attacks.

    The report is based on actual details from TrapX customer engagements and lab research the firm did on commonly used models of medical devices. According to the report, medical devices, in particular picture archive and communications systems (PACS) radiologic imaging systems, are basically invisible to security monitoring systems which makes them an ideal platform for malware infections. The researchers found that hacker use the un-monitored machines to launch attacks on other, high value IT assets within the hospital, such as customer record keeping systems.

    Among the specific examples mentioned in the report were:

    A malware infection at a TrapX customer site spread from a unmonitored PACS system to a key nurse’s workstation. The result: confidential hospital data was secreted off the network to a server hosted in Guiyang, China.

    A healthcare institution was found to have the Zeus and Citadel malware operating from infected blood gas analyzers in the hospital’s laboratory, which were infected and provided a “backdoor” into the hospital’s network and were being used to harvest credentials from other systems on the network.

    “The medical devices themselves create far broader exposure to the healthcare institutions than standard information technology assets,” the report concluded.

    The researchers found that medicals systems that contacted patients were most vulnerable because they are in virtually every hospital department, almost never get software updates due to being in use and run old operating systems like Windows 2000 which are not longer supported for security updates.

    Based upon our experience and understanding, our scientists believe that a large majority of hospitals are currently infected with malware that has remained undetected for months and in many cases years. We expect additional data to support these assertions over time.” the company said.

    The report is among the first of its kind to document medical systems being infected with malware. Many such systems have been demonstrated by researchers to be vulnerable but very few have actively been discovered in the wild.

    It remains to be seen whether these systems are particularly being targeted or are becoming infected randomly due to be older and vulnerable.

    TrapX will release its full report later this week.

    Apple Announces Streaming Music Service To Take On Spotify And Pandora

    At the company’s annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple saved its big Apple Music announcement for the last keynote.

    After a relatively boring day, focused on technical enhancements to its PC and iPhone operating systems, the audience finally got a peak at a brand new product.

    Apple Music, its streaming service to compete with big players Pandora and Spotify, will feature personalized recommendations, curated playlists and streaming access to Apple’s huge library of music.

    In return users will pay a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 for a single-user plan or $14.99 a month for a six user family plan. While the single user price is the same as virtually all other streaming services, the family plan is notably cheaper. That’s an interesting move for a company that is usually the highest priced.

    Apple hopes to set itself apart with the launch of Beats 1, a new global radio station led by former BBC DJ Zane Lowe. This will replace the free, ad-supported level that most streaming services offer.

    The company touted Connect, an in-app social network where artists share photos, lyrics, and remixes, and speak to fans. Whether this gets used or collects dust remains to be seen – there are already a bevy of places to do all this (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Mixcloud etc..)

    Right now, Apple Music looks like a very convenient cash grab for the device maker. Apple already has user credit cards and an install base of over 100 million in the U.S. alone. Assuming it has 400 million in use worldwide, and can get Apple Music running in most of those markets, that’s a large number of potential users.

    Apple will also push the software out to users, avoiding the usual marketing spend needed to get installs.

    At $10 a month and 100 million users that some serious money. Granted Apple will only get maybe 25 percent of this, but its still notable. A more importantly recurring.

    The recurring is nice for Apple because the money will just show up every month. That’s a nice stable stream of cash that gets added for relatively little work. More importantly, though, it creates yet more stickiness to Apple products. By making it easy to get high quality streaming music on your iPhone, people are less apt to switch phones.

    And that’s probably the real play here.

    While there remains much to be seen about Apple Music, particularly can it convince users to sign up for monthly subscriptions and is it better than rival apps of varying sorts, Apple Music is a low risk, no-brainer bet. Its the type Tim Cook likes – predictable and nothing that, should it fail, will really rock the boat.

    Apple gets to stay laser focused on devices, adds a nice revenue stream and if the whole thing doesn’t work no big deal – Apple TV hasn’t been setting the world on fire and nobody seems to care. If Apple Music went that way the result would likely be the same.

    Apple Music will launch in the United States and other western markets June 30th with a three-month free trial, 2 months more than competitors at present (though expect a massive marketing push by the competition around the end of June).

    U.S. Army Homepage Is Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army

    Hackers loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime briefly defaced the homepage of the U.S. Army’s website on Monday.

    The official page of the U.S. Army displayed pop-up boxes urging the United States to stop training Syrian rebels late Monday afternoon. The hackers also posted a drawing calling the Syrian regime’s army as “the defender of honor.”

    The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a hacker collective aligned with Syria’s government, claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter Monday.

    The damages caused by the hack were not immediately clear, although it appeared to be primitive and designed to garner headlines rather than steal data. More sophisticated attacks on the United States by China usually go unadvertised.

    The Army’s website was fully accessible by Monday evening.

    The Syrian Electronic Army has made headlines by defacing the homepages of Western media organizations such as International Business Times, the New York Times and the Guardian in recent years.

    Its most notable attack came in 2013 when it briefly created a stock market sell-off by hacking the Associated Press Twitter account and posting a tweet saying that the White House had been attacked.

    The SEA’s goal is to counter propaganda and “fabricated news” against Assad by Arab and Western media. It describes itself as a “group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria.”

    It is widely suspected that the group has financial ties to the Assad regime, despite past denials.

    Man’s Blood Has Literally Saved Over Two Million Babies

    James Harrison is just an average guy from Australia. Between his daughter, grandchildren, stamp collecting and going for walks he has lots to keep him busy. His other hobby is donating blood. Nearly every week for over 60 years he has made a donation.

    Yet they don’t call him “The Man with the Golden Arm” just for the frequency of his donations, which in and of themselves would be wonderful. Having received a critical blood transfusion as a child, he always vowed he would repay the favor.

    Yet he’s repaid the favor about two million times over thanks to a discovery made shortly after he started donating his blood.

    “In Australia, up until about 1967, there were literally thousands of babies dying each year, doctors didn’t know why, and it was awful,” said Jemma Falkenmire, of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. “Women were having numerous miscarriages and babies were being born with brain damage.”

    All that death was the result of rhesus disease, a somewhat common condition where a pregnant woman’s blood starts attacking her unborn baby’s blood cells. It results in brain damage and usually death for the unborn child.

    Harrison’s blood donations were flagged by inquiring doctors, who discovered he had an unusual antibody for the disease in his blood. After being contacted by doctors in the 1960s he agreed to work with them to develop an antibody injection called Anti-D. The drug basically cures both mother and child of rhesus disease.

    “Australia was one of the first countries to discover a blood donor with this antibody, so it was quite revolutionary at the time,” said Falkenmire.

    “Every bag of blood is precious, but James’ blood is particularly extraordinary,” says Falkenmire. “His blood is actually used to make a life-saving medication, given to moms whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies. Every batch of Anti-D that has ever been made in Australia has come from James’ blood. And more than 17% of women in Australia are at risk, so James has helped save a lot of lives.”

    Doctors still can’t pinpoint exactly why Harrison has the rare antibody in his blood, though they suspect he developed it as a result of his childhood transfusion. He’s one of about 50 in Australia who have the magical blood, according to the Australian Red Cross.

    “I think James is irreplaceable for us,” says Falkenmire.

    “I don’t think anyone will be able to do what he’s done, but certainly we do need people to step into his shoes,” she added. “He will have to retire in the next couple years, and I guess for us the hope is there will be people who will donate, who will also … have this antibody and become life savers in the same way he has, and all we can do is hope there will be people out there generous enough to do it, and selflessly in the way he’s done.”

    Harrison is considered an Australian hero, winning numerous awards for his work. He’s now donated his plasma more than 1,000 times, but is humble about his service, seeing at his duty to fellow countrymen.

    Harrison’s donations are estimated to have saved over two million babies from certain death. Though that probably means he repaid the favor, he has no intention of stopping now. He’s just happy to help.

    Dallas Cowboys Will Start Training Their Quarterbacks Using Virtual Reality Goggles

    2016 is supposed to be the year virtual reality hits the mainstream, but the Dallas Cowboys football team isn’t waiting around. After all, they’ve already been waiting 20 years to win a Super Bowl and are hoping that cutting-edge technology will help bring that to an end.

    The Cowboys recently signed a two year deal with StriVR Labs, a virtual reality startup focused on the sports training market. The company’s system will be used to train all of its quarterbacks.

    The goggles allow players to see a live-action virtual reality video replay of a football play from the quarterback’s perspective. The quarterback can then stop, start and review the play from a first-person perspective, looking in any direction. This would allow them to see defensive coverage, where certain players were and anything they might have missed.

    StriVR’s technology isn’t interactive at this point, but is instead focused on teaching quarterbacks decision-making skills using a real play that doesn’t require a whole practice squad to run over and over again. This should allow for both starters and backups to get more practice.

    The company was started by former Stanford University kicker Derek Belch as a master’s thesis and spun into a company earlier this year. His invention received some credit with helping the school turn around its football season last year.

    Thus far StriVR has deals with Arkansas, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Dartmouth and of course Stanford.

    U.S. To Import Chicken Eggs For First Time In A Decade As Bird Flu Decimates Domestic Supplies

    The massive Iowa bird flu outbreak, which has seen millions of hens slaughtered in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly disease, is beginning to be felt in the economy. Just ask commercial bakers and producers of processed food in the U.S.. who have started experiencing shortages that have cut into production.

    The USDA is poised to give them some relief, as they will soon be able to buy egg products from the Netherlands, the first European egg imports in more than a decade.

    Five Dutch farming companies will begin selling egg products to American producers within days, according to a spokesman for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The Iowa outbreak of bird flue has seen over 47 million birds killed as a result of the H5N2 virus. Egg laying hens accounting for 80 percent of the total, some 35 million birds.

    In a normal market the United States usually produces enough eggs to export tens of millions of them a month, yet that’s all changed recently. Shortages have sent prices for egg products used by bakeries and manufacturers soaring over 200 percent in just the past few weeks.

    Cartons of regular factory farmed eggs for consumers have become 120 percent more expensive in the last month, pushing shoppers toward organic or cage-free options, as those prices haven’t jumped since the better cared-for hens haven’t been impacted by the outbreak.

    Canada is currently the only nation from which the U.S. imports commercial egg products. Yet the FSIS said The Netherlands’s food safety system “continues to be equivalent” to the U.S. system, and the lack of imports aren’t a reflection of food safety but other economic factors.

    Discount Airline EasyJet Will Start Using Drones To Inspect Aircraft

    The battle of the budget airlines is all about cost savings. British low cost carrier EasyJet thinks it can save a buck or two by using drones to help it with aircraft inspections, it announced Monday. The company is investigating the use of preprogrammed drones to check aircraft on the ground after serious events such as lightning or bird strikes.

    As it stand now these sort of inspections are done visually and require a certified engineer to physically get up above the aircraft and walk around its exterior. As aircraft are quite large, this requires a platform and is time consuming.

    The company is banking on drones to be able to do the work faster and more safely by flying around the aircraft taking pictures pictures, which an engineer can then review on a computer workstation.

    The company states that a human review and sign-off will still be needed on any aircraft that has been checked by a drone, which likely means the airline will test the effectiveness of the drone program against the manual inspection system before making the decision to solely use the drones.

    EasyJet says it has already proven that a drone safety check is possible and is working with Bristol University and Blue Bear Systems, a British drone company, to create the pilot project.

    Right now the project is looking to improve the resolution of images, so that ultra-fine details will appear on computer screens.

    The company is looking to deploy the pilot program in the next twelve months.

    Disband The TSA? Agency Failed To Uncover Dozens Of Employees Linked To Terrorism

    Perhaps its time to give some serious thought as to whether the TSA ought to be its own agency or not. A Department of Homeland Security report found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) failed on 73 occasions to identify aviation employees with active links to terrorism. This means 73 agents with clearance badges and thus access to aircraft, screened baggage and other sensitive areas, were actively associated with terrorist groups.

    The specific people were not identified because the TSA is not permitted to receive all terrorism-related information under current inter-agency policies.

    The report found that the “multi-layered process to vet aviation workers for potential links to terrorism was generally effective. In addition to initially vetting every application for new credentials, TSA recurrently vetted aviation workers with access to secured areas of commercial airports every time the Consolidated Terrorist Watchlist was updated”. “However, our testing showed that TSA did not identify 73 individuals with terrorism-related category codes because TSA is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related information under current interagency watchlisting policy.”

    The lack of data-sharing means there is a strong case to absorb the agency into another one of our many police forces, which would have access to such data. It’s clear the TSA on its own does not have the full trust of other agencies, making the job of vetting agents difficult as a stand-alone agency.

    But there are also problems with the TSA and its policies, as thousands of records used to vet employees contained incomplete or inaccurate data, such as lacking a full first name or missing social security numbers.

    “Without complete and accurate information, TSA risks credentialing and providing unescorted access to secure airport areas for workers with potential to harm the nation’s air transportation system,” the report stated.

    The key recommendations were that the TSA “request additional watchlist data, require that airports improve verification of applicants’ right to work, revoke credentials when the right to work expires, and improve the quality of vetting data.”

    Despite billions of dollars spent to upgrade the TSA over the last decade, the agency remains woefully inept. It recently emerged that agency has lost thousands of security clearance badges and also failed to prevent explosives and weapons smuggling about 95 percent of the time.

    DJI Launches First Consumer Drone With Military-Like Guidance System

    While drones have been becoming more and more useful over the last couple of years, doing cool things like following GPS waypoints or chasing their owner’s vehicles, all while capturing epic video footage, most of this tech was only for the military or big companies with massive budgets. If you told a drone to go somewhere or do something, you were the one who needed to make sure nothing was in the way.

    That’s no longer the case today after China’s DJI, widely regarded as the market leader in consumer drones, announced a new model that features the first guidance system available to regular consumers. The system is a combination of ultrasonic sensors and stereo cameras which enable the drone to detect objects up to 65 feet away and then keep the aircraft at a pre-set distance.

    If there’s now a big tree in between two waypoint, the drone will go over or around it, without an additional input from the owner required.

    This technology is called ‘sense and avoid’ and is key to many sophisticated drone projects, like urban package delivery or low-level photography. Its especially useful around populated areas, where plenty of man made structures need to be negotiated. DJI says that research teams are already using the new guidance platform to build “unique applications, including an aerial solution created at Fudan University in Shanghai that uses Intel processors to detect illegally parked cars from the air.”

    The guidance system is available for DJI’s new Matrice 100 drone. The new model is designed for developers looking to test our theoretical drone designs across a wide range of industries.

    But the real significance of today’s announcement is it shows DJI is not content to just be a hardware manufacturer. The company sees itself and its technology as being but as a platform for the entire drone industry, where it controls both the software inside each vehicle and builds the outer airframes.

    Like its peers Xiaomi, Alibaba and Baidu, DJI has big ambitions and isn’t afraid to go chase them. Exect to hear a lot more about DJI in the coming months, particularly around the fall, as it launches new models in time for the important holiday season.

    World Celebrates As Nigeria Becomes First African Country To Ban Female Genital Multilation

    Nigeria continues to lead the way in Africa, a continent with so much promise yet so little fulfillment, this time making African history by becoming the first country to outlaw female genital mutilation.

    The ban came as a result of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, which passed the Senate on May 5th and cam into law last week.

    The legislation was one of the last acts by popular outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan and cements his legacy as one of Africa’s best-ever leaders. Muhammadu Buhari, his successor, was sworn into office last week.

    Female genital mutilation or ‘cutting’ as most in the country call it is the act of either partially or totally removing the external female genitalia.

    According to UNICEF “more than 130 million girls and women have experienced cutting in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is most common.”

    While there has been progress on the issue, which UNICEF reports is now one-third less likely to undergo today than 30 years ago, the practice is still widespread.

    The new Nigerian law criminalizes the procedure, and the hope is that the ban will be strongly enforced to combat pre-existing societal pressures.

    The World Health Organization strongly discourages the practice due to immediate harmful effects that include uncontrolled bleeding, bacterial infection, open sores, as well as long-term consequences that include childbirth complications, infertility, and recurring bladder infections.

    UNICEF research has found that communities who practice the cruel tradition usually do so to reduce sexual desire in women and to initiate girls to womanhood.

    According to 2014 UN data, over one quarter of the women in Nigeria have undergone cutting.

    Stella Mukasa, director at the International Center for Research on Women, explains that the complexity of the issue means enforcement must be widespread.

    “It is crucial that we scale up efforts to change traditional cultural views that underpin violence against women,” she wrote in an article. “Only then will this harmful practice be eliminated.”

    Being Obese May Actually Help You Survive A Heart Attack

    Contrary to what you usually hear about being overweight and heart health, a new study found that being obese may actually improve the chances of survival after a heart attack. The counter-intuitive findings stem from the fact that excess fat appears to actually fight heart disease.

    Scientists have long been puzzled as to why people deemed to be very overweight consistently out-lived those with a healthy Body Mass Index after having a heart attack.

    The new study collected tissue from patients undergoing heart surgery and discovered that fat surrounding the damaged blood vessels releases chemicals that actually start to battle heart disease.

    Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death for most ethnicities in the United States and , killing more than 600,000 people each year and accounting for 1 in 4 deaths. The heart’s blood supply is blocked by a build-up of fatty substances in the coronary arteries, essentially starving the heart and leading to an attack.

    It has long been thought that all fat was bad for people with heart disease, full stop. Yet the new research seems to indicate that over a certain level fat starts to have a protective effect. While this makes obese people more likely to have a heart attack, they are at the same time more likely to survive.

    University of Oxford cardiology professor Charalambos Antoniades said: “Fat has a bad reputation but we’re learning more and more about how and why certain types of fat in the body are actually essential for good heart health. These findings are an important step towards a treatment that ensures this fat stays onside throughout our lives to help prevent heart disease.”

    Prof Jeremy Pearson, of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study, said: “This high quality research carried out on people and using human tissue has provided new perspectives on the roles of fat in heart disease and has implications for future treatment.”

    Peace With Palestine Is Worth $120 Billion To Israel, According To New Study

    While Israel’s political system increasingly moves to the right, with hardline President Benjamin Netanyahu openly advocating for genocide, Israel’s economy would gain more than $120 billion over the next decade should a two state peace agreement be worked out with the Palestinian state, according to U.S.-based think tank Rand Corporation.

    The study predicts that the Palestinians would see $50 billion in economic benefits, including a 36% jump in per capita income.

    Yet the conclusion is sharply different if a new wave of violence erupts between Israel and the Palestine. Israel alone stands to lose over $250 billion in economic opportunities over the decade, while Palestinians’ would see their per capital GDP fall by 46%. Such a drop would further impinge their survival as a people, given their current per capita GDP is barely $2,600 per year.

    The study, entitled “The Costs of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” concluded:

    A two-state solution produces by far the best economic outcomes for both Israelis and Palestinians,” said Charles Ries, co-leader of the study and a vice president at Rand. “In a decade, the average Israeli would see his or her income rise by about $2,200 vs. a $1,000 gain for Palestinians, compared with our projection for present trends. But that only works out to 5% for each Israeli, vs. 36% for the average Palestinian, meaning Israelis have far less and Palestinians far more economic incentive to move toward peace.

    It remains to be seen whether such a solution would be possible, given hardliner Netanyahu’s open disdain for Palestine and his ultra-conservative backers. Over the weekend Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in response to an ISIS launched rocket attack. Despite knowing it was not Palestinians who committed the attack, Israel bombed them anyway, showing just how far away the country’s mind is from peace.

    Chinese Tech Giant Alibaba Is Launching Cloud Computing Attack On Amazon, Google And Others

    If you think Chinese companies do business in China and that’s about it, you’re sorely mistaken. China’s tech leaders – Alibaba, Xiaomi, Baidu and others – are now massive tech giants, on par with American peers Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. This size means they’re no longer content to just operate in China. They’re coming to America and Europe.

    Chinese cloud computing company Aliyun, a division of ecommerce giant Alibaba, announced on Monday that it has signed up a slew of big international partners to sell its services globally.

    The seven companies announced include Intel, data center specialists Equinix, and French webhosting company Linkbynet. While Intel may be the only name familiar to most Americans it represents a strong endorsement of Aliyun’s vision and size.

    “We are expecting more partners to join, which also covers Europe,” said an Aliyun spokeswoman.

    To compete outside of China, Aliyun needs to have datacenters close to customers and consumers, meaning in places like the United States. Rather than build its own data centers, Aliyun’s strategy is to work with local providers.

    Once it establishes those relationships it then plans to sell its services to Chinese companies seeking to expand abroad, then focus on selling to foreign companies, according to Aliyun’s chief architect Derek Wang.

    This strategy mirrors that used by its parent company, Alibaba, which is slowly moving into the U.S. market by building research offices and hosting some of its content in the United States so it can be accessed more rapidly by U.S. shoppers.

    With 1.4 million direct and indirect customers, Aliyun has plenty of customers which it can sell to rather than aggressively courting U.S. businesses – for the moment, at least.

    The announcement by Aliyun reflects Alibaba’s plans to go global, which it named as its number one priority for 2015.

    Ethan Sicheng Yu, an Aliyun vice president, said that “the new Aliyun program is designed to bring our customers the best cloud computing solutions by partnering with some of the most respected technology brands in the world. We will continue to bring more partners online to grow our cloud computing ecosystem.”

    But don’t let the timid looking baby steps fool you. Alibaba, and other big Chinese tech giants, are coming to America. Over the next five years companies like Amazon, Google, Ebay and Apple will all see significant competition from the once unknown brands.

    Russia Latest Large Country To Force Google, Facebook To Forget About You

    Russia is the latest country to recognize the dangers posed by big tech companies who collect data and store it indefinitely. The communist country is pushing a new “right to be forgotten” law (RTBF) modeled on the already in-effect EU statute, in order to combat tech companies keeping and publishing outdated or inaccurate information.

    The European Court of Justice (ECJ) last year confirmed that EU citizens have a fundamental right to request search engines take down links to outdated or irrelevant information about them. Russia had been closely watching the ruling and hopes to have its law in place by January 2016.

    Where things may get different in Russia is that under the EU law, public figures, such as politicians. cannot simply re-write history. Activists fear the Russian law may be intended to do just that.

    The Russian law also proposes to be much tougher, with search engines having to fully comply with takedown requests upon receiving them. In the European Union search companies have the right to scrutinize the requests in order to make sure, in their eyes, the requests are warranted. Without such a check, its possible whole swathes of truth could be removed from the internet by interested parties.

    Since the ECJ ruling Google has received more than 250,000 such requests concerning nearly one million URLs. Personal information has been de-linked from the search index in just 41 per cent of cases.

    While the Russian proposal may be at one extreme, Google’s current system has no published guidelines or legal rules about how it is making these judgments. Instead Google gives examples of times it did and did not accept the requests by publishing a so-called transparency report.

    Over 80 lawyers have thus far asked for more information on how, exactly, it was making these decisions.

    Russian presidential aide Igor Shchyogolev said: “Citizens must be able to use the right to be forgotten.”

    Interestingly, the Russian plan will see the state censor, Roskomnadzor, handle the requests. The body has wide ranging power to block internet websites, censor newspapers and interfere with communications it deems to be counter to Russian interests.

    MERS Virus Outbreak Continues To Worsen As 6 Now Dead In South Korea

    The picture in South Korea, the country hardest hit by the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, continued to worsen this weekend.

    South Korea reported its sixth death from MERS on Monday, and said it has now confirmed 87 cases. That represents a shockingly high death rate, especially for a developed country.

    More than 2,500 people remain quarantined and 1,800 schools remain closed.

    The latest death was of an 80-year-old man who was in hospital in Daejeon, South Korea’s fifth largest city.

    The virus is most deadly in the young and old, taking advantage of weakened immune systems.

    First emerging three years ago, the virus is not well understood. While researchers continue to study it, the exact transmission mechanism isn’t yet known, which means elaborate precautions must be taken.

    According to the CDC, these include:”

  • Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.
  • Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, then dispose of the tissue.
  • Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
  • Avoid personal contact, such as kissing, or sharing cups or eating utensils, with sick people.
  • Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces and objects, such as doorknobs.
  • The first case in South Korea was reported on May 20th

    But South Korea is not the only country to see the virus. As of last Wednesday, 1,179 cases of MERS have been confirmed in 25 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

    The United States accounted for two of those cases, though both were health workers who had lived in Saudi Arabia.

    The World’s Most Popular Banana May Soon Go Extinct

    We now consider bananas to be a breakfast staple yet not long ago they were considered an exotic treat to be eaten on a plate with a knife and fork. Yet the now ubiquitous fruit could become extinct thanks to a fungus that is wiping out banana plantations around the world.

    The Fusarium wilt fungus has reached Asia and Africa and now Australia’s banana-growing regions. The banana industry is worried and its a problem entirely of their own making. In the quest for larger profits, they’ve relied on one single species of banana, the large, yellow and hardy Cavendish.

    But the Cavendish wasn’t always the world’s top banana. It replaced the Gros Michel, which lost the spot after plantations were decimated by the very same Fusarium wilt fungus in the 1950s.

    “The monoculture, the reliance on a single banana breed that makes all this possible — that makes the low margins work — also makes that fruit very susceptible to disruption,” said Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. “The biggest problem is disease.”

    The monoculture problem isn’t unique to bananas. Lack of plant diversity isn’t unique to bananas. We once got our daily nutrition from 7,000 species of farmed crops. Today rice, wheat, corn and potatoes are responsible for more than 60 percent of global human energy intake, according to the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization. Four crops now produce over half our food.

    The new Fusarium wilt fungus isn’t the same one that killed bananas in the 50s, instead designated as Panama disease Tropical Race 4.

    The effect it has on banana plants is that it first yellows the plant’s leaves, then browns them as they dry out, killing the plant and its tasty fruit.

    The fungus spreads easily on dirt clinging to shoes, truck tires and shipping containers, all of which are common features at a commercial banana plantation.

    So far the fungus hasn’t reached the Americas or western Africa, but its likely only a matter of time.

    Dan Koeppel thinks its only five to ten years away. “And as of now there is no cure, and when it comes it will go fast and it will go very devastatingly, will probably wipe out the entire banana crop, unless something is done about it, unless some kind of cure is found or unless we diversify our banana crop before that” said Koeppel.

    There may not be a way to save the Cavendish. Instead, researchers are looking to create new species that are more genetically resistant to the fungus and then replace the Cavendish, just as it replaced the Gros Michel.

    Yet the same monoculture problem would persist, highlighting that new, blue ocean, approaches may be needed that involve more genetic diversity in crop varieties to fully protect the industry and its tasty fruit.

    Deadly Monkey Malaria Is Now Spreading To Humans

    The first case of Monkey Malaria occurred in the spring of 1965, when a CIA spy entered the jungles of Malaysia pretending to be a surveyor with the U.S. army.

    While the spy, known as B.W., didn’t accomplish much of note he did contract the first known case of monkey malaria.

    Upon landing in the United State a Maryland hospital confirmed a diagnosis of Plasmodium knowlesi, a form of malaria previously thought to only infect macaques.

    Five decades after B.W. came down with the disease, thousands of P. knowlesi cases have now been reported across Southeast Asia, in every country except Laos. In Malaysia, where the vast majority of cases have occurred, the monkey parasite is now the leading cause of human malaria, accounting for 66 per cent of the country’s 3,923 malaria cases last year, according to government statistics.

    Scientists no longer relegate the disease to monkeys, labeling it the “fifth human malaria.”

    “It’s surprising how little we do know about P. knowlesi,” stated Jonathan Cox, with the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Cox is leading a project that is examining the disease’s emergence. “I don’t think it’s going to cause a pandemic or anything. But we don’t know enough about the risk factors to know exactly what we’re dealing with yet.”

    Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite and passed from human to human by mosquito bites. Every year nearly 200 million people in developing countries contract the disease and it kills an estimated 584,000, making it among the most deadly in the world.

    Yet there are actually more than 150 species of malaria parasites, but each generally preferrs a specific host. Some like mice, other prefer snakes while still others only infect penguins. Prior to P. knowlesi coming along just four species were known to infect humans.

    Scientists have long known that P. knowlesi could infect both monkeys and humans, as for a time patients with neurosyphillis were infected with the parasites as a form of treatment. Yet nobody thought that P. knowlesi infections were happening outside the lab.

    Investigations at the time of the first case concluded it was a freak occurrence.

    “The 1965 case was probably considered a curiosity,” said Dr. Christopher Plowe, a malaria expert at the University of Maryland. “We had no clue P. knowlesi was significant to human health.”

    The husband and wife team of Balbir Singh and Janet Cox-Singh, malaria researchers who moved to Malaysian Borneo, made a startling discovery.

    When investigating cases of P. malariae, a rarer and usually milder form of malaria, they found something odd.

    Patients were getting really sick and sometimes dying which was highly unusual for P. malariae, which is usually a milder form of the deisease. The Singh team traveled by boat up the Rajang river to where cases were clustering and brought some blood samples back to their lab.

    Using brand-new gene sequencing technology, they quickly realized why these cases were so abnormal. They weren’t P. malariae. They were P. knowlesi.

    “Initially, we thought it was just one or two cases,” said Singh. “But what we found out was that virtually everything that’s been identified as P. malariae has been P. knowlesi.”

    The two malarias look so similar under the microscope that its possible P. malariae hasn’t been in Malaysia for some time and instead its been P. knowlesi.

    The big question now becomes understanding how P. knowlesi is being transmitted. Researchers still think that it is sporadically jumping from monkey to human but that raises an interesting, and deadly, possibility: Will it evolve to start spreading human-to-human?

    Scientists still have a lot to learn about the new parasite, with a recent study revealing that humans are actually being infected by two subtypes of the parasite.

    That brings up another interesting question: What would happen if mosquitoes were simultaneously infected by both P. knowlesi subtypes?

    “Potentially you could get hybridization,” said Dr. Cox. “And that might change how pathogenic this parasite is.”

    U.S. Navy Successfully Tests Next Generation Aircraft Catapult

    The U.S. Navy’s next-gen electromagnetic catapult for aircraft carriers is just about operational, after completing successful tests late last week.

    The new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) successfully launched an 80,000 pound steel sled off the USS Gerald R. Ford, the first time a “dead-load” has been involved.

    The catapults are the envy of the world, particularly China, which is still struggling to master first generation catapults that use steam. The advantages over traditional catapults lie in using electromagnetic energy which means smoother acceleration and less stress on the aircraft. This means carrier based aircraft will have longer service lives. Presently any carrier launched aircraft have significantly shorter lifespans than their land-based counterparts due to the stress placed on the airframe.

    The catapults are also faster, requiring no time to build steam pressure between launches. This means operations on the flight deck can move much faster, which will be key as the navy switches to smaller unmanned drones. More drones on deck will mean more launches and on current carriers the catapult is the bottleneck. The EMALS system will remove this.

    The catapult will be one of the key pieces of technology present in the Navy high tech next generation carriers. For now, the tests with the weight sled will continue and the Navy has already retrieved the sled from the James River to conduct more dead-load launches in the coming weeks.