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Vietnam To Buy U.S. Fighter Planes In Move To Counter China’s Aggressive Military

Vietnam, a user of Russian weapons since its war with the United States in the 70s, is in unprecedented talks with European and U.S. contractors to buy advanced fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and unarmed drones to improve its aerial defenses to combat China’s growing assertiveness in disputed waters.

The battle-hardened country already owns three Russian-built Kilo-attack submarines, generally regarded as among the best available for purchase in the world, and has three more on order as part of a $2.6 billion deal signed in 2009.

Added a sophisticated modern air force would give Vietnam one of the most potent militaries in Southeast Asia.

The country is the best trained military force in Asia, only behind China because of its smaller size and less advanced technology.

The new aircraft would be either from U.S. firms Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing, Swedish defense contractor Saab or European consortium Eurofighter said industry sources.

The fact Lockheed, Boeing and Eurofighter are in the mix suggest that whatever Vietnam buys will not be old and outdated but, like its Kilo class subs, will be modern and more than capable of winning against increasingly advanced Chinese fighters.

While no deals have yet been signed, representatives from all companies in the bidding have made multiple trips to Vietnam over the last few months.

Defense industry sources say Hanoi wants to replace more than 100 ageing Russian MiG-21 fighters while reducing its reliance on Moscow, who is increasingly viewed as China’s one and only ally.

Vietnam has already ordered about 12 Russian Sukhoi Su-30 front-line fighters to augment a fleet of older Su-27s and Su-30s.

“We had indications they want to reduce their dependence on Russia. Their growing friendship with America and Europe will help them to do that,” said the defense contractor.

The disclosure of the discussions comes just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s visit to the country and pledge $18 million to help Hanoi buy U.S. patrol boats.

While no comments have emerged from most of the firms, Boeing seemed keen to win the businesses, stating that it believed it had capabilities in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms that may meet Vietnam’s modernization needs”.

Vietnam increasingly views Washington as a reliable defense partner and also a key economic ally. The country has been on a campaign to increase ties with both the United States and Europe in recent years, as it emerges as one of Asia’s fastest growing and modern economies.

World Outraged As Iceland Ships 1700 Tons Of Endangered Whale Meat To Japan

The international community strongly condemned Iceland and Japan on Friday after reports emerged that an Icelandic ship loaded with 1,700 tons of whale meat left for Japan on Thursday. The move prompted outrage from environmental groups and social media.

“Winter Bay has left Hafnarfjordur harbor with 1,700 tons of whale meat with Ghana… as their first destination,” Sigursteinn Masson, Iceland spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Japan uses a network of loosely regulated African countries, like Ghana, to conceal the fact it continues to harvest and eat rare whales and other marine mammals, as we’ve profiled here in the past.

Iceland and Norway are the only nations that openly defy the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 ban on hunting whales. while Japan thinly disguises its commercial whale hunt as ‘research’.

The hunt regularly draws activists, such as conservation group Sea Sheppard, in confrontations that frequently turn violent.
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According to Icelandic newspaper Eyjan, the meat was loaded aboard a ship near the capital Reykjavik two weeks ago, but mechanical issues delayed the vessel’s departure until yesterday.

Last year’s shipment from Iceland to Japan, which contained over 100 rare whales, made only one stop outside Madagascar’s harbor because in South Africa, where another stop was planned, protests prompted the government to declare them unwelcome.

The ship is now forced to anchor offshore because of the threat of protests.

Last September, the 28 member states of the European Union and a coalition including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Israel and New Zealand stated their “strong opposition to Iceland’s continuing and increased harvest of whales…and to its ongoing international trade in whale products.”

We suggest you share this story far and wide to raise awareness of this activity and bring it to a halt.

Corrupt FIFA President, Fearing Arrest, Refuses To Attend Olympics Meeting In Switzerland

Formerly defiant FIFA ringleader Sepp Blatter, who is resigning as president of world football’s scandal-plagued governing body, has decided he’d rather not end up like six of his colleagues, who were arrested in Switzerland last week.

As such, he will not attend an International Olympic Committee meeting in Lausanne next week, the IOC said in a statement.

“He informed the IOC president some time ago he will not be attending,” an IOC official was quoted as saying.

Blatter, as head of FIFA, is an IOC member, which also casts a negative spotlight on the Olympic body, which has had corruption allegations leveled against it in the past. The IOC and FIFA operate very similar selection processes and share many members.

The IOC is slated to hold an executive board meeting in addition to a meeting for the 2022 winter Olympic bid cities between June 7-10.

FIFA claimed in a statement that the decision had been made in April, before the current crisis erupted, yet the motives behind it are clear: Blatter fears he will be arrested and extradited to the United States to face trial.

“Back in April the FIFA President informed the IOC that he would not be attending in person the session in Lausanne. His plans have not changed,” said FIFA.

“Future travel plans of the FIFA President will only be confirmed in due course.”

Those are not likely to include anywhere sympathetic to America, as already indicted senior official Jack Warner announced on Thursday he will fully cooperate with U.S. authorities and give intimate details and names of wrongdoing. That is likely to include Blatter, whom he directly reported to while working at FIFA.

Russian Space Program Is A Mess As It Delays Opening New Spaceport Until 2023

Fresh off of losing two rockets in the last sixty days trouble continued for Russia’s ailing space program as it announced on Friday that the first launch of a manned spacecraft from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome is now slated for 2023.

That’s three years later than originally planned, the head of Roscosmos, Igor Komarov, said Friday.

Vostochny is a $3 billion spaceport under construction in the Amur region of Russia’s Far East, which is intended to ensure Russia’s independent access to space by easing reliance on the aging and not on Russian soil Baikonur complex in Kazakhstan.

But the project, like the Sochi games or 2018 World Cup, has been plagued by corruption and missed construction deadlines.

“The first launch under the manned [spaceflight] program from Vostochny will take place in 2023,” Komarov was quoted as saying during a tour of the construction.

The first launch is slated to be an Angara-5V, which first launched in July last year. The V variant will be adapted to the safety standards required to launch astronauts.

The target deadline for manned launches from Vostochny aboard Soyuz rockets was prior to 2020, but last month newspaper Kommersant reported that the modified Angara rocket would be used instead. The modifications will take several years to complete, pushing the first manned launch past 2020, though it is likely this decision was taken due to construction issues and not the need for a new rocket.

Russia is not only struggling with corruption but is also having funding issues with Putin’s ambitious space program because of heavy economic sanctions placed on Russia for invading Ukraine.

Komarov said, “work on the Angara heavy rocket class is proceeding in two stages. First, we are preparing the launch complex for a launch of Angara in 2021 with an unmanned spacecraft.”

“The next step will be the creation of a second launch pad for the [heavy] Angara-A5, and […] the Angara-5V, [which] will carry a next generation manned spacecraft,” he said.

Komarov did not specify which exact spacecraft would be launched by the Angara-5V, but it is possible that it could be the long awaited New Generation Piloted Transport Ship, designed by Russia’s largest spaceship builder, RSC Energia.

The move would come a few years after NASA’s new SLS vehicle debuts and also after SpaceX and Boeing launch their own commercial manned spacecraft.

Deadly MERS Virus Continues To Spread, Kills Two More In South Korea

Middle East respiratory syndrome continues to plague South Korea as officials confirmed two more deaths in what has become the largest outbreak outside the Middle East. The country has seen four deaths so far and the country has announced significant measures to control any further spread.

Yet the government of President Park Geun-hye has been accused of not doing enough to contain the outbreak and of endangering public safety by withholding information.

The latest to assail the government was influential mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon, who on Thursday lambasted national authorities for not disclosing that a doctor at a Seoul hospital had attended a gathering of more than 1,500 people only the day before being quarantined for symptoms.

Over 1,160 schools and kindergartens in South Korea have been temporarily closed, while many people are now wearing surgical masks when going out in public.

On Friday the government announced that five more people had tested positive, bringing the total number in South Korea to 41.

“It increased the possibility that the virus spread and infected more people,” mayor Park said, calling the issue a “grave situation.”

Health officials across the country have raced to track down anyone who may have come into contact with patients which has resulted in more than 1600 people being isolated in their homes or at state facilities.

North Korea is also now worried about the virus as on Thursday the North asked to borrow heat-detecting cameras to help screen South Korean factory managers as they commute to an industrial park run jointly by the two countries.

The South Korean government agreed to lend three of the cameras to the North, showing just how seriously the international community is taking the threat of the deadly disease.

MERS is similar to SARS, a virus that wreaked havoc on the world economy in 2003. As the virus spread world travel and tourism ground to a halt, causing tens of billions of economic losses, particularly in China, where the disease was first uncovered.

Yahoo Announces Its Shutting Down Maps And Other Properties

As consumers are increasingly using GPS enabled smartphones to plot their way around while driving, biking and walking, the pressure is high on those who provide such data to make sure its accurate and timely.

In recognition of this immense task, Yahoo announced yesterday it will ditch its ancient Yahoo Maps to focus on “search, communications and digital content.” Maps isn’t the only thing to go, as Yahoo is cutting a few more products that were popular with users but would never be commercial successes.

Yahoo Maps (maps.yahoo.com) will be gone by the end of June, though may appear again in future search upgrades.

“We made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo’s priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago,” the company said in a report entitled “Q2 2015 Progress Report on Our Product Prioritization”

Other project to get the axe include:

  • The Yahoo mail app on Apple devices running iOS older than Version 5 as of June 15. This will be replaced by a mail.yahoo.com website.
  • GeoPlanet & PlaceSpotter APIs are being retired in the fall
  • Yahoo Pipes, a handy tool for playing with feeds and web page mashups, will go dark on August 30th
  • International media properties, like Yahoo Music and TV in Canada and France will also go away, though no timeline was given on these.
  • The move to close these properties makes commercial sense. They are low impact, low profit yet highly labor intensive and so should probably go.

    But the fact it has taken so long to get there suggests Yahoo, and CEO Marissa Mayer, are still figuring out what, exactly, Yahoo should be.

    Increasingly it appears Mayer’s idea of Yahoo is a more media-oriented version of Google, her former employer. Search and communications, two of the three pillars of the new platform, are exactly what Google does.

    Google is also in the content game, the third pillar, thanks to its YouTube video property. Mayer has gone into that space, acquiring Dailymotion, while also emulating Netflex, through commissioning shows like Community and hiring celeb news anchor Katie Couric. She also recently landed the first NFL regular season football game to appear for free on the web, which shows that ‘content’ in Yahoo-speak is video. And lots of it.

    It will be interesting to see if Yahoo can effectively compete with pure play video companies like Netflix and Hulu, while Apple TV rolls out across the industry.

    It may amount to a question of how long Mayer can, or wants to, retain her CEO title.

    New Blood Test Will Reveal Every Virus You’ve Ever Contracted

    While most people can’t remember every viral infection they’ve ever had their blood definitely can. A new test, developed by researchers in Boston, counts the antibodies present in a person’s blood to reveal the complete history of the viruses they’ve been infected with over the course of their life.

    The method is not only useful for diagnosing current and past illnesses, but also for developing vaccines and studying interactions between viruses and chronic disease.

    “This is really a technical tour de force,” claims immunologist Hidde Ploegh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who wasn’t involved with the work but sees the implications.

    The test also has the potential to reduce the number of tests required to find a particular pathogen, as presently medical staff most test blood samples for one pathogen at a time. This means a variety of tests looking for a variety of things. While the process is getting better, as companies like Theranos labs shrink test size and improve speed and accuracy, one test is always better than many.

    Researchers led by Stephen Elledge of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School developed their test by first assembling a library of almost a hundred thousand synthetic protein fragments, each representing a piece of a virus that an antibody might recognize.

    When the proteins are added to a drop of blood, antibodies attach to recognized fragments and from there researchers isolate the antibodies to determine which viruses someone has been infected with.

    The creative new test, dubbed VirScan, “allows scientists to ask questions that just couldn’t be asked before,” Elledge says. “You can compare groups of people—young and old or those with a disease and those without—and see whether there’s a difference in their viral histories.”

    In their research, most of which was outside the United States, most people had 10 previous viral infections, with those having HIV or living outside the United States averaging more. The most common viruses included the herpes virus and rhinoviruses, which causes the common cold.

    Surprisingly, most people generated the exact same antibodies, disproving earlier theories that each person’s immune system is incredibly unique.

    It remains to be seen if the test can substitute for more specific, disease by disease tests, says microbiologist Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University. “Before we view this as a definitive definition of what people have been infected with, we need to be sure it’s a comprehensive picture,” he says. “Right now, I don’t think it is.”

    Racaniello points deficiencies in finding the antibodies linked to noroviruses and rotaviruses, which cause large numbers of intestinal infections. This could be because such anti-bodies don’t linger in the body for as long or it could just mean the test needs further fine-tuning.

    Yet the work stands out by its breadth and technological innovation. Never before has such a comprehensive set of results been available in one simple test.

    VirScan is not yet a commercial product but Elledge thinks it won’t cost much more than existing tests that only look at one pathogen at a time. “You could give a drop of blood every few years and they can run it to see if you have any new infections,” he says. This could be particularly useful in diagnosing viruses like hepatitis C, which people are often unaware they have.

    Facebook Releases Trojan Horse Of An App To Developing Countries

    Facebook has gifted the world, especially those lacking high bandwidth internet connections, with Facebook Lite, a minimalist version of the privacy invading social networking app.

    Facebook doesn’t think anyone, anywhere, should be able to escape its data slurp and has pared back its app to make sure it gets the data it needs while providing users a service that doesn’t consume all their minimally available bandwidth.

    The company released the app yesterday which is under one megabyte, offers “core experiences like News Feed, status updates, photos, notifications and more” and “uses less data and works well across all network conditions.”

    It will roll out to Asia first, then “parts of Latin America, Africa and Europe.”

    But the company isn’t being altruistic here. The app pairs with Facebooks slimy Internet.org scheme, in which users are offered a Facebook curated, watered down, version of the internet instead of Facebook just providing them with download credits to use on any website they wish.

    The latest app is a data grab, pure and simple. Facebook will tolerate a little less user engagement in order to get “the next billion” hooked. Once it has their data and has them using Facebook, it can then ramp up the ads and data-selling, all the way to the bank.

    The EPA Uses Data From Big Oil To Conclude Fracking Isn’t Dangerous To Ground Water

    In a truly bizarre report, which totally undermines the credibility of the agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claims that fracking, where a toxic chemical slurry is poured deep into the ground, doesn’t contaminate drinking water.

    Yet the study, requested by Congress and taking over five years to prepare, found instances where water sources were affected by hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

    The EPA, somewhat comically, also found risks to drinking water in formations where fracking had been conducted and where water supplies were scarce.

    Yet overall, according to the EPA, there was little impact to water supplies from the thousands of wells around the country.

    Which all doesn’t really add up.

    The EPA said the study will give state regulators, local communities and companies “a critical resource to identify how best to protect public health and their drinking water resources,” said EPA science adviser Thomas Burke.

    That’s likely where the problem lies, as based on the absurd findings, the study’s overall conclusion will pave the way for even more fracking, removing a common objection that it does, as the EPA found in many cases, pollute water supplies.

    Environmental groups immediately cast doubt on the EPA’s contradictory findings.

    “There are still significant gaps in the scientific understanding of fracking,” said Amy Mall, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This study is site-specific and limited, as the EPA has explained, which makes it impossible to fully understand all the risks at this time.”

    Mall pointed out that unlike past studies, the EPA this time acknowledged there are some effects on water.

    Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that

    “Ongoing physical integrity of the wells and handling the millions of gallons of wastewater coming back to the surface after fracking, over the lifetime of each well, are even bigger challenges,” he said. “Relentless focus on these issues by regulators and industry is critical.”

    The EPA’s Burke admitted to reporters that oil and gas companies were ther major source of information on locations and practices, and that the agency had a “very cooperative relationship with industry.”

    Perhaps a little too cooperatve, given that pumping toxic chemicals into groundwater supplies causes them to be filled with toxic chemicals. Fracking has also been shown to cause earthquakes.

    Energy groups, predictably, embraced the EPA’s findings.

    The draft study will undergo external review by the public and the agency’s Science Advisory Board, which is due to conclude next year.

    Here’s hoping they can wring out all that oil money staining the pages and publish actual results and not a free pass to the oil companies.

    ‘Viagra For Women’ Is Finally Approved By The FDA

    It was a long time coming but third time’s the charm for flibanserin, a revolutionary new drug to combat female sexual dysfunction. The drug is the first medical treatment for the condition to gain approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

    The advisory panel of medical experts looking into research about the drug voted 16 to 8 to recommended approval of the pill, although they added several safety restrictions. The restriction address concerns around low blood pressure, fatigue, and fainting.

    Flibanserin is a pink pill taken every day at bedtime. It was specifically approved to treat lack of sexual desire in premenopausal women that cannot be linked to disease or other known causes. Approximately 7 percent of premenopausal women have this condition, known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

    The drug’s multi-rejection approval process makes it one of the most controversial drugs in some time to clear FDA approval Women’s rights groups were particularly vocal about getting the drug approved, which may have influenced the FDA’s decision.

    FBI Tries To Use ISIS To Get Apple And Google To Backdoor Their Products

    Pedophiles and terrorists are the two bogeymen used by law enforcement to get people to surrender their rights and acquiesce to short circuiting the rule of law. The general line is that ‘if you don’t do this, you must support pedophiles and terrorists’.

    The latest to be accused of supporting these two bogeymen are Apple and Google, by offering users encrypted communications, a senior FBI official has told the House Homeland Security Committee in Congress.

    Michael Steinbach, assistant director in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told Congress yesterday that ISIS and other terrorist groups are using commercially available encryption technology to secure their communications, preventing law enforcement surveillance.

    Steinbach, in as brazen an attempt to stifle your liberty as we’ve ever seen, called for private companies to “build technological solutions to prevent encryption above all else.”

    In short, he would like an FBI backdoor into the communication of every American.

    This is the precise practice recently condemned by Apple CEO Tim Cook, which we profiled here, because its both impossible and seriously infringes peoples rights and freedoms

    The lazy director’s statement is a sharp reversal of a call the FBI made four years ago, which recommended encryption as a basic security measure.

    Steinbach told the committee that encrypted communications were the bane of the agency’s efforts to keep the American public safe from terror, yet the FBI recently admitted such warrantless wiretapping and spying hasn’t actually caught any terrorists, ever.

    In another bizarre statement, Steinbach played word games, saying that:

    “Privacy above all other things, including safety and freedom from terrorism, is not where we want to go,” Steinbach said. “We’re not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious.”

    He somehow thinks that if companies work directly with law enforcement, then it isn’t a backdoor.

    Front door or back door it amounts to not only a mathematical impossibility to put back doors in encryption algorithms but also a competitive disadvantage for American companies, who are already losing customers because of similar arrangements with the NSA.

    Steinbach’s absurd, technically impossible, request is the latest example of lazy policing in America. Just like the DEA, which we covered here, the FBI wants yet more ability to easily do their jobs, regardless of the implications on your rights and freedoms.

    And that’s exactly the point – their jobs should be difficult and should be covered in red tape. These are vital checks to ensure rogue operators aren’t using all the power granted to law enforcement for bad purposes and that their actions follow the rule of law.

    The FBI’s campaign to make their jobs easier at the expense of both your rights and the rule of law is lazy policing, plain and simple. Their job should be done the right way, with checks and balances, rather than the easy way.

    Man Made Spider Silk Is About To Hit The Market

    Scientists have long marveled at spider silk for its feather-like weight yet steel-like strength. There have been numerous attempts to produce the material commercially but they have, up until recently, been too expensive to be commercially viable.

    Bolt Threads, a student-founded startup, has been at it for five years and is finally ready to go to market with the magically flexible and durable material that’s in some ways as strong as steel.

    The company has developed a synthetic alternative to spider silk by engineering proteins identical to the natural threads spun up every day by spiders. Thanks to $40 million in funding from Silicon Valley heavyweight VC firms Foundation Capital, Formation 8, and Founders Fund those proteins will soon be turned into fabric.

    “Over the past few decades, as clothing companies squeezed on price, they’ve taken the innovation out of apparel,” says Dan Widmaier, Bolt’s chief executive officer.

    Widmaier along with co-founders Ethan Mirsky and David Breslauer are genetically modifying yeast to get them to excrete silk-like proteins.

    “What would have been done in cells of spiders is now being done by yeast in our lab,” Widmaier says.

    Investors are betting this material will rival the creation of ­petroleum-based fibers such as polypropylene and lycra. The former is lightweight and breathable but a breeding ground for smelly bacteria while lycra is thin and stretchy, but wears out easily.

    By fiddling with the genetic makeup of the yeast cells Bolt can engineer fabrics to specific levels of softness, durability, and strength. “Our investing hypothesis was to make tunable silk that is hyperelastic and machine-washable,” says Steve Vassallo, a general partner at Foundation Capital, who invested in the company in 2011.

    Back then, Bolt Threads was called Refactored Materials and had scientific rather than commercial goals. Widmaier was studying how to make proteins from yeast cells when he met Breslauer, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, who was looking at how to process spider silk into fibers. They were operating on grants from the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation to research yeast-made proteins and evaluate uses in ballistics—possibly to replace Kevlar in bulletproof vests—and materials such as surgical sutures. The most lucrative opportunity was right in front of them; Widmaier’s wife is a fashion designer at Old Navy, and the founders realized they could pitch their synthetic silk as an alternative to ­petroleum-based textiles such as polyester or cheap but non-eco-friendly staples like cotton.

    Bolt Threads’ office contains the usual conference rooms and lounges but also commercial grade centrifuges used to filter out the silk from the liquid. A larger room will soon hold 200-liter fermentation units for producing silk in greater quantities while Bolt is working with the Michigan Biotechnology Institute in Lansing to do larger-scale fermentation in 4,000-liter tanks. Unifi, a yarn manufacturer based in Greensboro, N.C., has been contracted to spin Bolt’s fibers into apparel-ready yarn and textiles.

    The company expects to have high-performance sports shirts and bras using the material by late next year. Sue Levin, the founder of athletic wear retailer Lucy Activewear, to lead merchandising and marketing.

    Though that strategy is a bit controversial, as the decision becomes whether to make its own clothes or provide the fabric to other apparel makers, or both.

    The co-founders don’t seem to have that part figured out and have both hired Ms Levin and are also talking to a major apparel brand about using the fabric

    They don’t have much time, either, as rivals at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are using bioengineered yeast for similar uses in apparel and medicine, such as artificial heart tissue.

    Which is all good news for consumers. Within the next two years we’ll see the spider-silk type material hit the market. If it lives up to its promises we’ll see big apparel companies like Nike, Lululemon, Adidas and others quickly jump on the bandwagon.

    And that should just be the start. Once the process if figured out on low-grade applications like fabric, you’ll see more advanced forms of the material work its way into medical devices and other high-tech applications.

    Chinese Hackers Steal Four Million Federal Employee Records In Largest Hack Attack Ever

    The Chinese cyberwar on the United States continued to ramp up on Thursday as the federal government began notifying millions of employees that their information had been stolen by hackers, who attacked government’s human resources system.

    While the feds are working to assess the impact of the massive data breach, Chinese hackers are confirmed to be behind the data breach, Dow Jones reported, citing sources.

    “The FBI is working with our inter-agency partners to investigate this matter. We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously, and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” an FBI spokesman said.

    A congressional aide familiar with the situation said the Office of Personnel Management (OPM and the Interior Department were compromised. Another U.S. official said the data breach could potentially affect every federal agency, making it the largest compromise of government records in history.

    The OPM currently plans to notify over 4 million individuals whose identity information may have been compromised in the breach, the agency said in a statement.

    “Since the investigation is on-going, additional PII exposures may come to light; in that case, OPM will conduct additional notifications as necessary,” the agency said.

    The White House was considering making a statement concerning the breach and was eyeing Thursday evening or Friday morning to do so.

    The OPM is effectively the human resources department for the federal government, responsible for employee payroll records. It also handle security clearances, which may have been part of the information targeted.

    The breach was discovered in April yet is only notifying users now.

    The huge time delay means that millions of Americans could have been victims of fraud in the period between when the breach was discovered and when they were notified.

    Such long lag times are the target of data breach notification legislation, which is already law in some states. Its unclear whether a federal agency would be subject to such legislation even if it was enacted on a federal level.

    Air Force Bombs ISIS Headquarters Revealed Through Social Media Selfie

    For most people an ill-advised social media post leads to embarrassment, a break up or maybe even a lost job.

    But for one ISIS militant, and his associates, a revealing social media post led to three Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) missile strikes less than 24 hours after the U.S. Air Force’s 361st ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) Group spotted it.

    The post was, naturally, a selfie.

    “The guys that were working down out of Hurlburt, they’re combing through social media and they see some moron standing at this command,” the head of Air Combat Command shared during an Air Force Association breakfast in Washington D.C.

    “And in some social media, open forum, bragging about the command and control capabilities for Daesh, ISIL [ISIS]. And these guys go: ‘We got an in.’ So they do some work, long story short, about 22 hours later through that very building, three [Joint Direct Attack Munitions] take that entire building out.”

    While careful not to share sensitive details about either the location of the building or the airstrike itself, the commander stated that ISIS’ love of social media, which we’ve profiled here, can also reveal valuable information that can have real world consequences.

    The strikes show that the Pentagon is carefully watching the activities of ISIS and taking out select high value targets when possible.

    Seven New Species Of Beautiful Tiny Frogs Uncovered In Brazilian Rainforest

    Brazil’s rainforests are some of the most pristine, wildlife dense, jungles on the planet. They didn’t disappoint researchers recently, as they unearthed seven new species of brightly colored frogs.

    The delicate and extremely sensitive amphibians each live on only one mountaintop in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest, taking researchers five full years to discover them.

    The frogs, similar to those found in nearby Costa Rica, are all part of the genus Brachycephalus, and have already raised concern about potential extinction because of the very specific habitats they dwell in.

    The frogs are all under a half inch in length, which has led to structural changes in their body. They have fewer fingers and toes than their more common cousins and use bright colors to warn of a potent neurotoxin on their skin.

    “Although getting to many of the field sites is exhausting, there was always the feeling of anticipation and curiosity about what new species could look like,” said Marcio Pie, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Paraná.

    Scientists have known of Brachycephalus since 1842, yet most of the group’s members have only been identified in the last ten years due to each species inhabiting remote cloud forests. Such areas are incredibly difficult, and dangerous, to get to.

    “This is only the beginning, especially given the fact that we have already found additional species that we are in the process of formally describing,” Luiz Ribeiro, a researcher at the Mater Natura Institute for Environmental Studies.

    The extinction risk for the frogs is so high because cloud forests are extremely susceptible to climatic changes and the frogs would have a hard time migrating to another mountaintop if their currently habitat is destroyed.

    Brazil seems to appreciate the danger its forests are in and recently enacted sweeping protections to keep them safe from poachers and illegal logging.

    Shareholder Meeting For World’s Largest Security Firm Ends In Chaos Over Aiding Israel Commit Genocide

    For the second time in two years the annual shareholders’ meeting of security giant G4S has descended into chaos after nine activists were forcibly ejected by guards during protests against its operations in Israel.

    The meeting, held in London on Thursday, was frequently interrupted by uniformed and plainclothes security staff fighting protesters upset over G4S’ enabling of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.

    G4S’s supply of security and screening equipment to Israeli security forces dominated the proceedings, during which few questions focused on its financial results.

    The events were similar to the meeting last year, where protesters, who gained entrance by purchasing shares in G4S, were violently removed for speaking out against the company’s role in supplying Israeli prisons and the death of an Angolan man while in G4S custody.

    G4S responded to last year’s protests by vowing to end its Israeli prison contracts, but only within three years.

    Keen to avoid negative press for its enabling of the atrocities on the West Bank, which happened last year, the company banned all electronic devices this year.

    Chairman John Connolly cautioned that disrupting the “proper conduct” of the meeting would not be tolerated, which prompted an immediate protest in which the activist was carried out after she threw shredded photographs of teenagers being held in Israeli prisons.

    “Stop hurting me. This is what you do to Palestinian prisoners in Israel all the time,” she screamed while being forcibly removed by three guards.

    When pressed for exact dates of withdrawal from Israel, G4S said it would honor contracts until they expired in 2017.

    Ryvka Barnard, spokeswoman for anti-poverty group War on Want, said: “Their vague commitments serve only to distract from their continued failure to uphold their legal and ethical responsibilities.”

    During the two-hour meeting, protesters frequently interrupted, with some wearing masks of Palestinian teenagers who are being held in G4S managed Israeli prisons.

    On one point, ten security guards ejected two men who started to chant: “Who supports the siege in Gaza? G4S does.”

    The protests come amid growing world condemnation of Israeli mass killings of Palestinians, which the United Nations has deemed to be genocide. Earlier in the day French telecom operator Orange announced it would pull its branding from the country, in response to criticism of its support for Israel.

    California Set For Massive New Gas Tax Hike

    If you think low gas prices will mean lower prices to you at the pump all summer long, think again. Taking advantage of seasonally low gas prices, California is now considering increasing the amount of money paid at the pump for gasoline in order to fund transportation projects as federal road funding dries up.

    Legislation was introduced on Wednesday, in the California state Senate, to increase the state’s approximately 47 cents-per-gallon gas tax by 10 cents or 21 percent.

    The new California fuel levy, which would bring the total state tax to 57 cents per gallong, will be collected on top of an 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas. That means over 75 cents per gallon will go to the government.

    The tax seeks to take advantage of low prices, effectively passing the savings on gas prices to the government to waste rather than consumers. Yet most on Wall Street believe the low gas prices are merely a transitory dip, and that prices will rise back to normal levels towards the end of the summer.

    With an already struggling economy, the increased taxes will put a damper on economic growth when prices rise back up to their natural levels.

    States aren’t the only ones looking to capitalize on the short term price movements, with a gas tax hike being contemplated at the Federal as well. “Lawmakers in Congress are currently facing a July 31 deadline for the expiration of federal transportation funding, and they are struggling to come up with a way to pay for a long-term extension of the measure after passing a patch in May that last only two months.”

    The latest cash grabs are thanks to recent improvements in gas efficiency, as less gas sold at the pump means less tax revenue for the Department of Transportation. “The national gas tax has been the traditional source of transportation funding since its inception in the 1930s. The tax has not been increased since 1993, however, and improvements in auto fuel efficiency have sapped its purchasing power.” the department said in a statement.

    Given gas prices are right around where they were last year, state and federal politicians will have to come up with answers when it bounces back up to normal and the economy stalls thanks to consumers spending more money on gas taxes than productive purchases.

    Chinese Tech Giant Xiaomi Is Now The Second Largest Wearables Company In The World

    Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has quickly assembled a wide portfolio of world beating products, from smartphones to fitness trackers to its super popular backup batteries, yet has to date only sold the items in China.

    That should scare the pants off Google, Apple, Samsung and anyone else making such devices because despite little overseas sales, the company has become the world’s second largest wearables manufacturer in less than a year, according to new industry data.

    Xiaomi’s newly released fitness tracker the Mi Band, launched in the second half of 2014, sold 2.8 million units in the first quarter of 2015, data from IDC showed.

    That’s good for 24.6% of the wearables market and second only to Fitbit’s 3.9 million devices sold.

    While only 11.4 million wearable devices, which includes fitness trackers and smartwatches, were sold globally in the first quarter of the year, the number marked a 200% increase year-on-year from the first quarter of 2014.

    “Bucking the post-holiday decline normally associated with the first quarter is a strong sign for the wearables market,” said Ramon Llamas, IDC’s research manager.

    Yet Xiaomi’s success comes despite limited international sales. It only opened a UK store this week and doesn’t even sell its signature smartphones and tablets in overseas markets.

    What should worry the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google and others is that Xiaomi is very comfortable selling at extremely low price points – usually about 40% of the competition’s price – while still making a profit. More importantly people still like its devices, which are fashionable and contain high end hardware specs. Their build quality is as good as any.

    “What remains to be seen is how Apple’s arrival will change the landscape,” said Llamas. “The Apple Watch will likely become the device that other wearables will be measured against, fairly or not.”

    Yet Xiaomi isn’t sitting still. Having poached senior Google executive Hugo Barra, after Google founder Sergey Brin slept with his girlfriend, Xiaomi has assembled a roaster of top international talent.

    The company will no doubt unveil a rival to Apple’s new watch in time for the 2015 Christmas season at a fraction of the price. It’s phones and tablets will also likely be on sale in western markets at that time.

    The event will mark the first time the company is fully in developed markets for the all-important holiday season.

    And that will mean massive sales for the company, coming at the expense of everyone in the market.

    The world hasn’t seen Xiaomi flex its muscle yet. But when it does, which will be shortly, it will take the world by storm.

    Organic Food Found To Be More Profitable For Farmers

    Whole Foods isn’t the only one selling organic fruits, vegetables and other products to hungry shoppers as it seems just about everywhere these days has shelves full of organic ingredients, even big corporations like Wal Mart.

    The rise in shelf space corresponds to a rise in demand from consumers, who are rejecting food tainted with things like antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and genetic modifications. This trend means that fully five percent of U.S. food sales is organic.

    Yet only 1 percent of U.S. farmland is rated as organic, leading to the practice being 22 to 35 percent more profitable, according to a new paper from Washington State University researchers David Crowdera and John Reganold.

    The authors examined crop data from 44 studies involving 55 crops grown on five continents over 40 years. The reason, according to the researchers, for the increased profitability is the higher price farmers get when they sell certified-organic crops. The premium paid for organic food has been around 30 percent over the past three decades and looks set to continue as demand for the healthier food outstrips supply.

    Even if that premium were to narrow to just five percent, organic farmers would still be equally as profitable as conventional farmers because they use fewer chemical inputs, which they replace with labor. For example rather than using Monsanto’s cancer causing pesticide Roundup, organic farmers pay for weeding. If they get just five percent more from consumers for the healthier end product they make just as much money as conventional farmers.

    And while the study showed that organic farmers have a 15 to 18 percent lower yield, organic farming receives virtually zero research and development while conventional farming gets billions per year. In the few cases where organic farming has received such R&D that yield difference shrinks to almost zero.

    The lack of chemicals used in the fields also leads organic farming to have “greater energy efficiency; enhanced soil carbon and quality; greater floral, faunal, and landscape diversity; and less pesticide and nutrient pollution of ground and surface waters,” they write.

    These externalities “likely make up for price premiums awarded to organic products,” the authors note. When consumers pay up for organic food, they’re essentially paying farmers a little extra to maintain healthy soil and avoid damaging pesticide runoff.

    With all the profit out there why aren’t more farmers going organic?

    There’s a three year transition to go organic, where farmers will use the more expensive organic processes yet receive no extra payout because the certification only comes into play in year four and beyond.

    This investment leads most farmers to continue to farm as-is.

    Due to this switching cost and increased consumer demand, the authors see the premium for organic foods continuing for some time to come.

    Travelers Really Love Cheap Tickets: 72 Hour Sale Crashes Southwest’s Website

    Southwest Airlines Co.’s 72 hour seat sale proved to be too much of a good thing, as huge public response slowed the website to a crawl on Wednesday.

    Despite adding capacity for the website in anticipation of high demand from a 3-day sale that began Tuesday, visitors to southwest.com late Wednesday afternoon saw a “system alert” warning that “you may experience difficulty” on the site.

    Users who could actually start the booking process eventually got a “Gateway Timeout,” preventing them from snagging the hot tickets.

    Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said workers were trying to restore the website’s functions and advised customers to try later or call the airline directly for help.

    The sale featured prices as low as $49 on one-way short haul flights and $149 each way for long haul trips, between Aug. 25th and Dec. 16th.

    What travelers may not have noticed is that both American Airlines and United Airlines were matching Southwest’s fares on routes that overlap.

    Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com , also found Delta, Alaska, Virgin America and Frontier also had fares matching Southwest on overlapping routes.

    Mr Seaney advised consumers not to despair, as booking fall flights during the first week of June will result in the best prices of the year, regardless of whether you happened to get one of Southwest’s super-cheap tickets.

    There was no word from Southwest as of mid-day Thursday if the promotion would be extended due to the website outages.

    Video Game Hall Of Fame Launches, Inducts Super Mario Bros, Doom In Inaugural Class

    At one time the thought of a video game hall of fame seemed absurd. Games were played by young boys as a hobby and their appeal was fairly limited. But the launch of Nintendo combined with rapid innovations in computer chips and the rise of the internet has turned this once niche hobby into a multi-billion dollar a year industry.

    There are now professional e-sports leagues, where cyber athletes are paid huge salaries to compete professionally and video game schools, where aspiring young gamers can train and learn from professional gamers.

    As the industry grows, it seems natural that it get its own hall of fame, in order to properly celebrate the achievements of the industry and preserve the memories of games gone by.

    That dream became a reality Thursday, when the official World Video Game Hall Of Fame launched in Rochester, New York and online via museumofplay.org.

    The games in the inaugural class of 2015 span multiple decades, countries of origin, and platforms, but were selected for having “significantly affected the video game industry, popular culture, and society in general.”

    The 2015 class saw the following inductees:

  • Pong
  • Pac-Man
  • Tetris
  • Super Mario Bros
  • DOOM
  • World of Warcraft
  • Other finalists that were not selected this year include: Angry Birds, FIFA, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, The Oregon Trail, Pokémon, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Space Invaders.

    Virgin Galactic To Start Putting Customers In Space In Just 18 Months

    Despite a fatal accident last year, space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced it will be carrying its first paying customers “within 18 months to two years”, according to chief executive George Whitesides.

    Speaking at the Mojave Air and Space Port, Whitesides said the company is still on track for lift-off, despite having to rebuild a replacement for its crashed SpaceShipTwo aircraft.

    Last year’s loss was a major blow to Virgin Galactic which saw pilot Michael Alsbury killed and the vehicle lost. The crash was determined to be caused by the premature deployment of the vehicle’s rotating tail boom “feather” re-entry system while its rockets were still firing.

    The system is only designed to be used when the craft starts drifting back to earth.

    The final NTSB report is due in a few weeks and Virgin Galactic is “confident this wasn’t a design issue”, although it remains to be seen why it was even possible for the ‘feather’ to deploy at the time it did. Whitesides addressed this, saying “it’ll be made physically harder to unlock the feathering system at the wrong time”.

    Whitesides went on insist that paying customers, at $250,000 a pop, have’t been put off by the accident. “The vast majority of our customers, so about 98 per cent, have been really terrific, very supportive. What we are doing is not easy, it’s an historic thing. What we are doing is opening up space to the rest of us. We are democratizing space.”

    If Virgin Galactic can launch within the 18 month to two year window it will become the first commercial operator to offer flights into space. While the system will not get would-be astronauts into orbit, it will give them multiple minutes of weightlessness along with a pretty cool view.

    SpaceX, of California, also has plans to launch space tourists but is pursuing more lucrative NASA crew missions and satellite launches before it gets into full on space tourism. By developing the technology for NASA it may partner with Bigelow Aerospace, builder of inflatable orbiting hotels, to deliver the full astronaut experience: multiple days in zero g, orbiting the earth.

    Both the price and timetable for such adventures have not been announced, though you can expect it to be a great deal more than $250,000.

    China Has A Water Problem: Two Thirds Of Groundwater Unfit For Humans

    China’s careless use of natural resources has already led to most of its fish stocks being depleted and it now looks as if the same fate could befall its water supply after a new study found that nearly two-thirds of China’s underground water, and over a third of its surface water, were rated as unsuitable for direct human consumption in 2014.

    The report was released on Thursday by China’s environment ministry, which may even be understating the problem.

    Recognizing that it is polluting itself out of existence, China has begun waging a “war on pollution” to reverse the damage caused by decades of environmental abuse in order to achieve high rates of economic growth.

    In its annual environmental bulletin, the ministry found just 63.1 percent of the monitored sites were ranked at “Grade III” or above, the minimum level fit for human consumption. Grade 6, the highest, was found to apply to only 3 percent of the country’s total reserves.

    To combat the rapid decline, which has seen potable water decline by a stunning 17 percent over just two years, the government will ban water-polluting factories in industries such as oil refining and paper production but not until the end of 2016.

    The slow reaction time is caused by China’s obsession with economic growth, even as it destroys its own environment. Such destruction has caused it, in the case of fishing, to source virtually all of its fish from international waters and even resorting to stealing from trading partners in order to feed its citizens clean fish.

    New Photos Show North Korean Dictator Getting Even Larger, Possibly On Purpose

    Things are anything but normal in North Korea, arguably the world’s most backward country, with new images released Thursday that confirm this.

    The images show North Korea’s brutal leader proudly displaying his ever-expanding belly in an open pinstripe suit, surrounded by military officials nearly half the size of the ‘Supreme Leader’.

    Jong-un’s weight gain and its associated health effects has been a hot topic of world politics in recent months, with the weight gain believed to be associated with a love of Swiss cheese.

    The 32 year old dictator developed a taste for the high fat dairy products during his time as a student in Switzerland, and now imports vast quantities for his personal consumption.

    His diet and lack of exercise have had dire consequences on his health, causing him to disappear for three weeks in September last year, only to emerge with a cane and bandages.

    Analysts attributed his illness to gout and a broken ankle caused by his immense size and love of wearing Cuban heel shoes.

    Such medical scares lead to further destabilization of the country, as if the leader is perceived to be weak he could be overthrown by his top generals or family members. As he eats himself to death the behavior of the country becomes increasingly erratic.

    While poor health runs in Jong-un’s family, causing his father Kim Jong-il to die because of high blood pressure and diabetes, in North Korea, where food is scarce, being fat is actually seen as a positive thing.

    70 per cent of the 24.6 million people in North Korea are deemed to be “food insecure”, according to the UN, which makes them skinny and deeply envious of those who can eat enough to put on weight.

    This odd social phenomenon mirrors the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in western culture where sporting a belly was considered a sign of wealth and power.

    North Korean defector Cho Myung-Chul, of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, said: “North Koreans think being fat is good, unlike South Koreans who want to be skinny. There is a high chance Jong-un intentionally gained weight to look like Il-sung.”

    Apple Caught Using Its App Store To Bully Rival Smartwatch Makers

    Apple is notorious for playing hard ball with just about everyone and its treatment of rival smartwatch manufacturers appears to be no different, according to reports released late Wednesday.

    The makers of the Pebble smartwatch, the world’s first, issued an update to customers that Apple is in no hurry to approve the latest bug-fixed version of the Pebble Time iOS app. Which is surely no coincidence, given Apple just released its own smartwatch in April month.

    The reports sound just like the fight to bring real web browsers to the iPhone, with the Pebble team claiming the Apple App Store is stalling its approval of the Pebble Time software that connects the watch to their phones.

    Apple used a similar strategy with popular web browser Firefox, using arcane rules and minor technicalities to justify holding up the release of the browser for years.

    The company is waiting on approval for two distinct apps – a new app for the watch and an update to older app, which supports the first version of the Pebble Time.

    “The Pebble Time iPhone app, as we’ve all noticed, is not yet live on the iTunes AppStore. It remains in review,” Pebble wrote in a blog post. It went on to say

    We’re doing all we can to mitigate the delay and make Pebble Time Watch for iPhone available for download. We unfortunately cannot simply publish the original submission approved on May 18 due to quirks in the AppStore submission process and rules.

    We considered adding Pebble Time support to the existing Pebble iPhone app. Sadly, that app also has a pending update—containing one bug fix—in Apple’s review process. Version 2.6.6 remains ‘in review’ now for 43 days and counting.

    Pebble beat Apple to the smartwatch market by over two years, but has struggled to compete with the massive marketing budgets of Apple, Samsung and others, despite having what many regard to be a superior product. Pebble is the largest crowdfunded campaign in history, getting its start on popular site Kickstarter.

    Apple has a long history of turning down apps that compete with its own products and removes any software from its App Store that links to a gadget that rivals its iPhones, iPads and iPods.

    It will be interesting to see if this stance holds, given the flood of watches about to hit the market from Tag Heuer, Swatch, Samsung, LG and many others.

    Russia Caught Hacking Deep Into German Government Computer Systems

    A recent hack attack on the German government, also know as the Bundestag, has been directly traced back to Russian secret police, according to leaks revealed to a German newspaper.

    While officials within the German government won’t go on the record pointing the finger, the leaks to prominent newspaper Spiegel amount to as much and detailed a sophisticated state-sponsored attack.

    The complex malware infiltrated the Bundestag network and stole data from just about every system on the network, including all lawmakers’ computers. In total all 20,000 accounts on the network are thought to be compromised.

    German cyber forensics experts finally managed to read parts of the source code late Tuesday and now suspect that the Kremlin perpetrated the attack. The malware closely resembles a similar program used in a 2014 attack on a German data network that was traced to Russia.

    The revelations highlight just how much cyberwar is happening in the world today. While most everyday citizens don’t see it, as we work and go to school the world’s governments are engaged in heavy cyber battle.

    DEA Getting Lazy As Wiretaps Soar 300% Over Nine Years

    The FBI isn’t the only U.S. secret police agency to have a case of NSA envy. It’s also not the only one getting lazy, preferring rights eroding technology and rubber stamp approval processes rather than good law abiding police work.

    According to information obtained published on Thursday, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration conducted 11,681 electronic intercepts in 2014, up from 3,394 in 2005.

    The sharp increase is thanks to agents increasingly going to state judges for warrants, bypassing the more rigorous federal procedure.

    Its the latest example of a worrying trend of secret police forces taking short cuts rather than adhering to the law.

    The trend is particularly concerning as remote access malware, whereby law enforcement can take complete control of a suspect’s mobile phone or computer, makes its way into the DEA’s tool kit.

    Such tools give agents unprecedented power while using even more sneaky legal loopholes to avoid proper judicial oversight.

    The use of state courts on paper should be just as stringent as federal court because state wiretap laws “must include all of the safeguards federal law requires,” yet in practice state courts are far easier. This is because federal law requires approval from a senior Justice Department official before agents can approach a federal court judge for permission to conduct one.

    State law imposes no such restriction on state court wiretaps, which means it is far easier to obtain.

    The DEA, along with the FBI, makes this even easier by keeping a list of judge’s who are fine with abusive wiretaps and only approaching these friendly judges.

    The effect is a rubber stamp approval process, allowing agents to wiretap at will.

    What’s clear from the revelations is that agents are becoming lazier and disrespecting the law. What may be viewed as ‘red tape’ for a regular field agent is designed precisely to slow their progress and make sure the invasive level of access they require is truly warranted and legally justifiable.

    Without this check, our secret police forces will be able to run amok, wiretapping whoever they wish. That’s not consistent with our constitution and fundamentally changes our hard won rights and freedoms.

    Cancer Causing BPA Still Present In Majority Of U.S. Canned Foods

    Fresh questions emerged Wednesday about the FDA’s impartiality as a new study showed that the world’s largest food companies and brands continue to coat metal food cans with bisphenol A (BPA) a chemical that causes breast cancer, reproductive problems, heart disease and a host of other illnesses.

    The study is the first of its kind to look deeply into food companies and their products for consumers.

    There has been a suspicious lack of data available on specific manufacturers, brands and companies using the chemical, so Environmental Working Group (EWG) took it upon themselves to develop the largest database of companies and products using the toxic chemical.

    The findings are nothing short of shocking. “If you go to a store and buy a can, it is likely to have BPA,” said EWG Research Director Renee Sharp, saying that there was “not a lot of information on alternatives” available to consumers.

    While numerous countries, such as Canada, the European Union and China have banned BPA use in baby bottles and baby food packaging, less than one-third of the 252 brands surveyed use BPA-free cans for all their products.

    Because the FDA refuses to publish a national BPA standard, companies are able to label their products “BPA-free” despite the fact they still contained small amounts of the chemical.

    The science linking BPA to harmful health effects has been around for years and is widely acknowledged, similar to the linkage between tobacco smoke and cancer.

    Underscoring just how acute the problem is, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found BPA present in 93% of urine samples it tested. In short, BPA is everywhere in our lives and in our bodies.

    While BPA has been showing to alter the brain and nervous system development, in addition to changing reproductive systems, even at low exposures, the FDA has been slow to act.

    In 2014 is even reduced its warning on BPA, calling its use “safe at the current levels occurring in foods,” citing “scientific evidence.”

    This sudden change of heart went counter to a January 2010 statement announcing that it had “some concern about the potential effects of BPA in the brain, behavior, and prostate glands in fetuses, infants and young children.”

    The fact roughly three-quarters of the canned food market contains BPA is shameful and raises serious questions about both the FDA and the big companies putting this toxic chemical into Americans. It also potentially exposes companies to lawsuits if more evidence emerges that the toxic effects were widely known and yet the companies continued to put the chemical into food products.

    Web TV Companies Don’t Get It. Their Services Are Way Too Expensive

    Hollywood has a bad history of seeing new, innovative technologies, as a way to screw their customers and take more money from them. For years they stubbornly fought various internet companies – Napster, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy, Bittorrent and then Beatport and Apple – by suing their very own customers and refusing to sign economically logical deals to give people access to music at reasonable prices.

    They did the same with movies, waging a war on customers while sites like 1 Channel, Popcorn time and Bittorrent ate their lunch because they refused to play ball and preferred to sue their customers.

    Their delay has cost them. They don’t control distribution, which they could have, instead relying on Pandora, Spotify, Apple, Netflex, Amazon and Hulu to deliver their content, missing the boat on a lucrative opportunity to cut out the middlemen and connect directly to their audiences.

    So you would think, in light of these tough lessons, content producers would have smartened up. But a look at streaming services shows that’s not the case. Rather than banding together, most premium content producers have inked haphazard deals with a variety of players, effectively splitting the catalog that has been available on cable TV across a host of third parties.

    Those that have launched their own services, like HBO and as of today Showtime, think for some reason people will pay almost as much as cable for their shows online.

    In all cases, big content companies are dreaming with the prices they’re setting for their online services.

    To illustrate the point, let’s look at the numbers:

    Hulu – $7.99
    Netflix – $8.00
    HBO Go – $15
    Showtime – $10.99
    Amazon Prime – $6.58

    Total Monthly Cost: $48.56 + tax

    Yet this $50 per month doesn’t get you the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL or any live content whatsoever. It basically gets you most of the newer shows and a nice catalog of old shows and movies.

    Assuming (which is a VERY generous assumption) that all live sports, news and local TV could be had for another $50 per month, which is low (rumor is ESPN alone wants fully $20 per month), the total price for web TV at the same service level as cable would be an astounding $100 per month.

    Otherwise known as the price of cable.

    Until big media starts to appreciate that they cannot capture all the value from new technology or use technological advancements to capture even more value for themselves, rather than give the benefits to consumers, apps like Popcorn Time or things like Bittorrent will continue to persist.

    Don’t Be Evil? Google Is Now One Of America’s Largest Lobbyists

    Before the Google boys were billionaires a couple dozen times over, the company promised to Do No Evil. Oh how times change. In addition to being one of the world’s largest privacy invaders, Google is involved with a whole host of activities to advance its big corporate agenda and keep the big bucks flowing.

    But don’t ask it what its up to, because even the most diligent Google searches don’t turn up much. Yet they do point to a pattern of big spending on political activities and other agenda driven groups that are unhealthy for America.

    Among the published donations, for instance, you’ll see a $26,000 donation to Democratic Governor Jerry Brown $10,000 to Republican Marco Rubio’s 2016 U.S. Senate campaign.

    Since President Obama took office, Google has spent over $60 million lobbying in Washington alone. It also participates in many state lobbying activities as well as highly secretive ‘third party’ groups. Yet virtually nothing is known about these shadowy groups and investors don’t like that.

    Google shareholders, of which there are few, want the company to live by its openness value. They are now demanding that the company fully disclose all of its lobbying.

    “Our request isn’t far-fetched. Many companies do this,” says Tim Smith of Walden Asset Management, which owns Google stock.

    Walden filed a formal shareholder resolution to require Google to be fully transparent about its lobbying expenses and objectives, which was shot down at its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

    Google lists 43 trade associations that it belongs to but in typical sneaky Google fashion it says these are “representative listings.” It also does not disclose much money it gives these organizations.

    The big push for Smith’s resolution comes because of a big disconnect between Google’s claim that it is committed to “protecting the environment” and the fact it funds the Chamber of Commerce, which has spent over $1 billion on lobbying since 1998 to stop the Environmental Protection Agency and virtually every measure that combats climate change.

    While other companies such as Nike and Apple, are vocally against the Chamber’s anti-climate change policies and have ditched the organization, Google is still a top contributor.

    To get a sense of just how evil Google has become, it says that the simple request for transparency would be “impractical and burdensome.”

    Despite being a tech leader, Google is clearly behind the times as large companies like Accenture and Bristol-Myers Squibb now disclose all their direct and indirect lobbying in annual and quarterly reports.

    Which begs the question: Just what, exactly, is Google hiding?