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California Set For Massive New Gas Tax Hike

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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?

    It’s Official: 2016 White House Race Will Likely Be Bush vs Clinton

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    Jeb Bush made an informal announcement that he will formally announce he is running for president, in two weeks.

    In a strange tweet published early Thursday morning, he announced “Coming soon…” with a link to a website funded by “Jeb 2016, Inc.”

    A senior aide then clarified to the media that he will make the official announcement on June 15th.

    The move ends a ‘will he, won’t he’ tour of the country as merely a prospective presidential candidate. His official press conference will take place at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus.

    The location is an indication he will make education one of his central policy goals, a strategy he used when he was governor of Florida.

    For America, Bush’s candidacy brings more of the same old D.C. politics from a dynasty American family. There has not been an election in over 20 years that did not feature either a Bush or a Clinton.

    Should either of them make it to office, which is the probably outcome given both are the favorites of their respective parties, America will see more of the same thinking and more of the same people running the White House.

    While America needs change, big corporations, who determine who gets elected, want people they can trust not to rock the status quo.

    T-Mobile And Dish Network In Talks To Merge

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    Ahead of the FCC’s tough new network neutrality rules everyone in the tv and mobile phone space seems desperate to merge.

    The latest to just the party is T-Mobile and the Dish Network, whose merger would in theory create another large competitor in the wireless industry.

    Dish has been eyeing a mobile phone network for some time, having previously looked to purchase Sprint before the deal fell apart. Talks between Dish and T-Mobile are ongoing, multiple sources confirmed.

    Dish is the number 2 satellite television service in the United States, and has acquired vast amounts of wireless spectrum. With a purchase of T-Mobile that spectrum could be put to use by an operator with towers and experience running a mobile network.

    The combined subscriber base of tens of millions of customers would allow the two companies to offer package services of phone and TV, and possibly web based TV offerings.

    But first, they’d have to strike a deal.

    While the Wall St. Journal reports the two are in “close agreement” about a leadership team, “with Dish Chief Executive Charlie Ergen becoming the company’s chairman and his T-Mobile counterpart, John Legere, serving as the combined company’s CEO.”

    The telecommunications industry is seeing rapid consolidation as rival AT&T, is seeking to merge with DirecTV and Charter Communications announced plans to merge with Time Warner Cable. Comcast, the largest TV provider, has already done a couple of mergers, most notably with NBC Universal.

    NFL Announces First Regular Season Game To Stream On The Web For Free

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    In what is likely to be the media deal of the year, the National Football League has partnered with Yahoo for the one time internet darling to be the exclusive partner to deliver the first-ever live stream of a regular season NFL game, for free, over the Internet.

    The game will be aired live and will not block certain countries and instead be available to anyone, anywhere around the world, making it a first.

    The game will be the NFL’s International Series game in London, England, on Sunday, Oct. 25th, 2015, between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars.

    In a strange quirk, highlighting Yahoo’s tangled mess of web properties, the game will be shown on Yahoo, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Screen and Tumblr.

    The move is obviously a test given its a low value game for traditional TV networks because it airs at 9:30am Eastern, meaning the West Coast won’t watch and there will be less fans on the East Coast as well.

    The game is a huge test for Yahoo. It will, in one moment, prove whether the elderly internet company can deliver such an important broadcast without screwing it up. A tecnical difficulty in streaming the game will effectively blacklist the company from any major sports deal, with the NFL or anyone else. So the stakes are high to deliver.

    The stakes are also high to see if Yahoo can make any money from the adventure. It will invest considerable sums in marketing and promotion for the event and will have paid the NFL a hefty sum for the privilege. Yahoo will need to demonstrate to shareholders that it can operate such an event at something that is close to economically viable. While its not likely to make a profit, given its the first one, it will still need to show meaningful results.

    The league first began shopping the rights to the game in February and reached out to big internet companies including Google, Apple and Amazon before clinching the deal with Yahoo, according to Sports Business Journal.

    Which means Yahoo, the least funded of all those rivals, likely paid through the nose. Google’s YouTube in particular was rumored to be well into the bidding, but being a Google company was not willing to be a loss-leader on the adventure, instead calculating its bid based on its vast store of advertising data.

    “Through this partnership with Yahoo — one of the world’s most recognizable digital brands — we are taking another important step in that direction as we continue to closely monitor the rapidly evolving digital media landscape,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a media release.

    Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer added, “We’re thrilled that the NFL has chosen Yahoo for this historic opportunity. It marks a significant change in the way users can access this amazing content.”

    But the game isn’t a web exclusive, rather the NFL will make the game available in local markets via CBS affiliates. Given the two are low popularity teams, the move significantly handicaps the viewership for the event, as for most in the local markets it will be business as usual, with not need to hit the web.

    While its a very missable test for the NFL, who will face little consequence if the broadcast isn’t a success, it could be argued the event is life or death for Yahoo – and perhaps CEO Marissa Mayer.

    ISIS Announces Plans To Expand Into Africa

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    The threat from ISIS is gathering momentum as it is increasingly using its new found wealth to expand into foreign territories. While it already has an alliance with Nigerian terror group Boko Haram, the group is looking to make an even bigger push into Arica, where relatively weak governance and even weaker military forces mean easy battles and quick land grabs, similar to its strategy in the middle east.

    Its latest target in Africa is Tunisia, one of the biggest exporters of fighters to ISIS, which has sent over 3,000 jihadists into the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

    In social-media savvy ISIS style, members published a “teaser” titled “Soon, Soon” on radical Islam forums that promises another video by an unknown group called “ISIS Tunisia Province.”

    The teaser footage shows ISIS members watching Tunisian soldiers and filming them with a hidden camera from inside a car. ISIS affiliates in other places quickly began gossiping that the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior had asked Twitter for information about the identity of those who uploaded the video. This prompted ISIS to issue a warning to use security when interacting with the social media platform.

    An ISIS presence in North Africa would come in addition to running half of Syria and Iraq, chunks of territory in Libya and Yemen, and smaller areas in Egypt and Algeria. It rules these areas with military commanders and provides civil services to the population.

    It also engages in rape, via forced marriages and recently announced plans to forcibly sexually assault over 2 million Iraqi girls.

    ISIS only previous link to Tunisia was last year’s attack on the Bardo Museum, in which 21 people, including 18 tourists, were killed.

    Google Secretly Storing All Your ‘OK Google’ Voice Commands

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    Google Secretly Storing All Your ‘OK Google’ Voice Commands

    Google doesn’t have a good reputation for protecting user privacy so, while disturbing, it should come as no surprise that a free service from Mountain View abuses what little you have left.

    It was discovered on Wednesday that every time you speak to your smartphone, saying “OK Google…” or tapped the microphone to dictate a text message, Google has been keeping logs of your every word.

    In the classic ‘no, its not bad its a great feature’ style of Google, you can play back your own recordings, as if this somehow makes it all better.

    The news can after Google launched its “My Account” feature, a Facebook-style ‘tool’ to make privacy more confusing and difficult.

    While its long been known that Google remembers every text search you perform on its site, we’ve now learned that it also stores a recording of your actual voice.

    While the purpose, at least right now, is ostensibly to help it better recognize your voice, it remains to be seen what Google will do with these recordings. It could easily sell them on to advertisers, who could then make a voice-print of you and do all sorts of creepy ad serving with the information.

    The collection of recordings appear in a section of your Google account called “Voice and Audio Activity.”

    It is not clear how long Google keeps the recordings or if other copies exist somewhere else at Google, but users can manually delete the recordings if they prefer.

    The fact remains, however, that most people will not delete them and won’t truly know they exist, thanks to being buried in a control panel with lots of other toggles and settings. This approach to confusing users about privacy was first used by Facebook, who can now claim they offer users the choice of privacy, one tiny little setting a time.

    For users, the net effect when presented with a confusing set of toggles, of which they don’t know much about, is to leave things as the big internet companies want them.

    Apple Suffers Rare Failure As It Recalls Beats Speakers Over Fire, Burn Concerns

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    It isn’t often that Apple, the world’s most valuable company, makes a mistake. But that’s exactly what happened Wednesday after it was forced to recall its Beats Pill XL speaker after a number of reports of overheating and a case in which a customer suffered a minor burn.

    The Chinese manufactured speaker retails for a whopping $325 and now poses a potential fire hazard due to a faulty battery.

    Apple promised a full refund to any U.S. or Canadian customers who return the item.

    It will accept returns at either its retail stores or provide postage-paid boxes for consumers to send their defective speakers back to the company.

    The issue affects a massive 233,000 units sold in North America through Apple’s retail and online stores and via Beatsbydre.com. The units would have been purchased between January 2014 to the present date.

    The U.S. consumer product safety commission released the following statement:

    This recall involves all Beats Pill XL portable, wireless speakers. The recalled products are plastic, capsule-shaped speakers about 4 inches tall by 13 inches wide by 4 inches deep with a plastic mesh grille on the front and a built-in carrying handle to the rear.

    The small “b” Beats logo is on the grille and “beatspillXL” is on the handle. The speakers come in five colours: black, white, pink, metallic sky and titanium.

    Apple acquired Beats from popular rapper Dr Dre in 2014 for $3 billion.

    The company said in a statement that customer safety was its “top priority” and asked Apple fans “to stop using their Beats Pill XL speakers.”

    The cost of the error could amount to $120 million and is a rare case in which Apple doesn’t get it right.

    Anti Vaccination Movement Leads To Return Of Diphtheria In Spain

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    Government health officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, which withholds much needed vaccinations to deadly diseases on the grounds the shots are more harmful to children than the diseases themselves.

    This issue is contentious, with Australia recently banning people from the healthcare system who do not receive the free shots.

    This looks to be a smart policy, as confirmed by a six-year-old child from Spain that has been admitted to hospital with the first recorded case of diphtheria in the country since 1986.

    The little boy had not been received vaccinations against the infectious disease, despite the free vaccination programs offered by Spanish public health services.

    EL PAÍS, a Spanish news agency, confirmed the boy had not been vaccinated because his parents are against the practice.

    The disease is deadly and the child is currently in the intensive care unit, where he is being treated with an anti-toxin. Yet because the disease is now so rare, thanks to vaccines, the Health Ministry had to search for the anti-toxin worldwide. Some was finally sourced from Russia, where the Russian ambassador flew to Spain to personally give the country the much needed drug.

    “The problem is that these days, no one has this illness. Everyone is vaccinated,” Rubén Moreno, the general secretary for the health service, told EL PAÍS.

    Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which is most likely to affect children under five and adults over 60. It spreads via direct contact or through the air, and causes severe respiratory problems.

    One out of every 10 patients dies from the early symptoms

    In light of this, general secretary Moreno, called these campaigns “irresponsible.” He continued: “The consequences of not vaccinating a child can be dramatic. The right to vaccination is for children, not for the parents to decide.”

    Pinterest Is Going To Crush All Other Social Networks In Profitability

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    Social networks are not known to make money. While Facebook makes some money, its mostly via accounting tricks and a unique growth cycle rather than cold hard cash. Ill-fated Myspace and undermonetized Twitter all have the same issue. People come for the party and ignore the ads.

    But hot rival Pinterest looks set to crush them both.

    The company, known for photo sharing home decor designs, hot gadgets and the latest fashion is going to become an e-commerce platform. Or rather e-commerce heavyweight.

    Later this month the company will launch “buyable pins,” for its iOS app that will allow Pinterest users to complete product purchases without ever leaving the company’s app.

    For anyone who has ever used pinterest, this solves a huge problem: Buying the item that looks so amazing.

    Prior to this, users relied on other users to link back to the original catalog item. That’s time consuming and erratic. It also doesn’t make Pinterest any money.

    In the new system, a new blue “buy this” button will appear next to the familiar “pin it” button.

    Once a user clicks the button, they can either use their credit card or Apple Pay to complete the purchase.

    The implications are massive. With over 73 million users and over 50 billion posts, nearly all of them products, the company will become the world’s largest e-commerce catalog.

    While other social networks spam you with ads that are sold for pathetically low rates, all while invading your privacy, Pinterest’s solution to making money is elegant, user friendly and highly profitable.

    The company’s initial retail partners in the United States include Macy’s, Nordstorm and Neiman Marcus, and will see more than 2 million items available to purchase at launch.

    The move will put it in direct competition with e-commerce heavyweights Amazon, Ebay and Alibaba. It will be interesting to see if any of these companies attempt to buy Pinterest before the new strategy takes off.

    If they don’t, they’re going to have to pay a huge premium once the numbers start hitting the financial statements because this addition is going to be absolutely massive.

    Despite $35 Billion Crime Spree Head Of JP Morgan Is Now A Billionaire And Not In Jail

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    For common folks crime doesn’t pay, but if you’re the head of a too-big-to-fail criminal racket known as a bank, in this case JP Morgan, it certainly does. And quite handsomely.

    Bloomberg, which tracks those with a net worth over $1 billion, added Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co., to its rich list with a net worth of about $1.1 billion.

    Dimon’s fortune derives from presiding over the bank as it committed a crime spree for the ages and was bailed out for taking excessive risks with the money of main street Americans.

    To recap, here’s a list of the crimes committed under his leadership:

  • Misleading CDO Investments, $153.6 million, Settled on 6/21/2011
  • Anticompetitive Conduct in Municipal Bonds, $228 million, Settled on 7/7/2011
  • Foreclosure Abuses and “Robo-Signing”, Settled on $5.29 billion, 2/9/2012
  • More Mortgage Misrepresentation, Settled on $269.9 million, 11/16/2012
  • Improper Foreclosures Pt. 2, Settled on $1.8 billion, 1/1/2013
  • Electricity Trading Scandal, Settled on $410 million, 7/30/2013
  • Illegal Credit Card Practices, Settled on $389 million, 9/19/2013
  • The London Whale, $920 million, Settled on 9/19/2013
  • The Fannie and Freddie Fines, $5.1 billion, Settled on 10/25/2013
  • Institutional Mortgage Securities, $4.5 billion, Settled on 11/15/2013
  • Misleading “Toxic Mortgages”, $13 billion, Settled on 11/19/2013
  • Libor Rigging Scandal, $108 million, Settled on 12/4/2013
  • Madoff Retribution, $1.7 billion, Settled on 1/6/2014
  • Currency Manipulation, $1.34 Billion, Settled on 11/21/2014

    • Total fines over three years: $35,241,500,000

    Total bailouts since 2008: $25,000,000,000

    Jamie Dimon Net Worth: $1,100,000,000

    It’s worth noting that these fines understate the magnitude of the crimes as the company pays less in fines than it made off the criminal acts.

    All of which begs the questions:

    How has this man been allowed to get this rich instead of going to jail?

    And

    Why is JP Morgan not deemed to be a criminal enterprise?

    British Student Union Votes To Boycott Israel Over Palestinian Genocide

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    Despite Israel’s massive propaganda efforts across global media outlets, the world is starting to take notice of the appalling atrocities the state is committing against Palestinians, in what has become an act of genocide.

    The latest indicator that the world is taking a tougher stance on the country, is that the UK’s National Union of Students passed a motion Tuesday to join worldwide efforts to boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights.

    The motion aligns the union with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which Israel so violently opposes that it started doxing U.S. student activists in an attempt to stop them from getting jobs upon graduation.

    The NUC’s Executive Council passed the “Justice for Palestine” motion, with 19 members voting in favor, 12 against and three abstaining.

    In addition to the boycott, the motion also called on the British Parliament to stop arms sales to Israel.

    The NUC is the UK’s umbrella student organization, representing over 600 higher education institutions and 7 million students.

    The bill “condemns Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza,” and calls on students to “co-ordinate a nationwide student day of action to commemorate UN Palestine Solidarity Day on 29 November,” according to media releases.

    While an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the measure had “little practical implications”, the Israeli government is taking both the vote and the BDS movement seriously. The movement seeks to cut off financing for Israel, which is a serious threat given it relies heavily on international trade and investment given the small state has little natural resources.

    Yet Israeli money is tough for western countries to ignore and given Israel is also a key ally of western government in their war against radical Islam and militant Arab states, the west seems perfectly fine with allowing the genocide to continue so long as Israel remains a reliable ally in the region.

    Highlighting this willingness to turn a blind eye, deputy British ambassador to Israel, Dr. Rob Dixon, said: “We are deeply committed to promoting the UK’s trade and business ties with Israel, as part the flourishing partnership between the two countries.”

    While the U.N. has unequivocally condemned the genocide, the attitude of the world’s leaders is clear: At the end of the day, money trumps human rights.

    FBI Is Investigating Disgraced FIFA President Blatter For Bribery

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    The FIFA soccer scandal continues to widen as reports surfaced late Tuesday that the FBI and U.S. prosecutors are investigating Sepp Blatter, who announced his resignation on Tuesday, as part of a wide ranging probe into the corrupt world soccer body’s conduct.

    While the FBI declined to comment because the investigation is ongoing, ABC News reported that investigators were hoping to use those indicted to provide specific information that could lead to charges against senior executives including Mr. Blatter. The tactic has been successfully used by federal agents in mob racketeering cases.

    U.S. authorities last week indicted 14 people — nine football officials and five sports-marketing executives — who face charges of wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering. They are accused of accepting more than $150 million in bribes.

    “Now that people are going to want to save themselves, there’s probably a race to see who will flip on [Blatter] first,” one of the sources stated.

    “We may not be able to collapse the whole organisation, but maybe you don’t need to,” another of the sources said.

    Curiously, a report by E:60’s Jeremy Schaap found no record of Blatter having entered the U.S. since 2011. Criminals will often avoid passing through the U.S. if they have reason to believe they are under investigation, as they could be arrested and detained until the matter is resolved because of flight risk.

    Last week’s indictments charged 14 with corruption, bribery and racketeering. The charges are significant as the defendants could face lengthy jail terms for the serious offenses.

    Norway Launches World’s First Bumble Bee Highway

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    While it may seem like a cute story, the world’s bee population is a pressing issue. World bee populations are declining at a rapid pace which has huge knock-on effects for commercial farming. Without bees crops don’t get pollinated and food doesn’t grow. As the world’s population expands and needs to be fed, bee populations are becoming the weak link in the food chain.

    In Norway, they’re taking the threat seriously, as the city of Oslo announced the world’s first ‘bumble bee highway’ on Wednesday. The highway is a corridor through the city’s pollen stations every 700 feet.

    “The idea is to create a route through the city with enough feeding stations for the bumblebees all the way,” Tonje Waaktaar Gamst of the Oslo Garden Society told a local newspaper. ”Enough food will also help the bumblebees withstand man made environmental stress better.”

    Bumblebees and other pollinating insects do not fair well in urban environments because there are few flowers rich in nectar, which means they starve.

    To encourage a healthy bee population, Gams and his team placed flowerpots on rooftops and balconies along a route from east to west through the city, paving a path for the bees.

    During the last few years, similar to the United States, many bee colonies have been dying out, causing damage to critical agriculture that depends on the insects.

    While Norway hasn’t been as hard hit as the US, six out of 35 Norwegian bumblebee species are on the verge of extinction.

    The Oslo effort combines city managers, environmental organizations, the public, and and companies, who are helping to plant bumblebee friendly flowers on their property.

    To help the insects clearly find the path, they’ve formed an organization called BiBy (Bee Town) which launched an app that shows the public “grey areas”, which are long stretches with no food for bees, to encourage planting flowers in areas where food sources are low.

    “It will be easy to see barriers and obstacles on the map. The goal is to inspire people to fill these gaps.” said Agnes Lyche Melvær of BiBy.

    The Norwegian model could serve as a template for other cities, particularly in the United States, to encourage bee population growth.

    South Korea Tests Powerful New Missile In Latest Sign Its Growing Tired Of Its Erratic Neighbor

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    North Korea isn’t the only one with missiles on the Korean peninsula. South Korea on Wednesday tested a new ballistic missile that can hit all of North Korea, developed under a new agreement with the United States that lets the South extend the weapon’s range to 500 miles.

    In the latest sign that South Korea is fed up with coddling its bellicose neighbor, president Park Geun-hye made a rare visit to a missile base to watch the launch of the guided missile. The new weapons system will play a key role in the South’s defense against its neighbor’s nuclear and missile threat, her office stated.

    “The test demonstrated improved ballistic missile capability that can strike all parts of North Korea swiftly, and with precision, in the event of armed aggression or provocation,” the president’s office said in a statement.

    The test comes after North Korea claimed it test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile though most experts and U.S. military leaders doubted the authenticity of the North’s claim.

    The new South Korean missile was developed under a new agreement with the United States, signed in 2012, to more than double the range of the South’s missiles in order to overcome its disadvantage with Pyongyang’s missile capabilities.

    South Korea has historically been a pacifist nation, going out of its way to befriend its hostile neighbor and not escalate tensions. With this policy the South had purposely not developed missile or weapons systems that would provoke the North and trigger an arms race.

    The North Korea’s insistence on increased militarization, bellicose rhetoric and provocative actions have led to popular opinion in South Korea changing, favoring a more aggressive stance towards its neighbor.

    The North has a wide array of missiles and is thought to be developing an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with nuclear weapons.

    North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket in 2012, putting what it claimed was a satellite into orbit. While the North called it a space launch vehicle, the launch was viewed as a thinly veiled test of an intercontinental ballistic missile and led to stiff sanctions.

    ISIS Is One Of Social Media’s Top Spammers

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    Terrorist group ISIS is known for their heavy use of propaganda, especially the use of social media to distribute their sickening videos and fanciful ideas.

    But the end result is the recruitment of impressionable young minds, lured into their dark world by empty promises of freedom and a worthy cause.

    France revealed alarming figures on Tuesday the show exactly why French authorities are taking the war against online jihadist networks so seriously.

    Newspaper Le Monde found that there are over 2,600 websites in French run by backers of ISIS, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Defense.

    ISIS propaganda cells also produce a stunning 40,000 tweets in French each day. That’s a significant amount of reach on a platform with a young and impressionable user base. Especially when considering that the ISIS linked accounts have over 2.8 million Francophone followers.

    While France’s response has been considered slow, last week Prime Minister Manuel Valls revealed details of how the French will combat the propaganda machine.

    France would be hiring hackers and also online “community managers” to more closely monitor the extremists, Valls revealed.

    The hackers would be in charge of monitoring the jihadists online and trying to identify them, allowing police to intercept before they had the chance to covert France’s youth.

    The interior minister has also blocked 36 illegal websites in recent months, which have in some way promoted jihadism.

    The government also took the step of releasing a shocking video campaign earlier this year in the hope of dissuading more young French nationals from heading to the Middle East.

    It’s not surprising that France is taking the jihadist recruitment seriously.

    The measures come after it was revealed recently that 45 teenage French girls are waging jihad in the Middle East, while there has been a 203 percent rise in the number of its nationals heading to the region.

    Apple CEO Comes Out Swinging Against FBI Plan To Spy Of Civilians

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    The FBI has NSA envy. While the NSA gets all the hot new tools to hack iPhones, Androids and all your favorite social media accounts, the FBI has been left to do regular old police work. This means it has to do pesky things like get warrants, justify itself to judges and perform actual surveillance.

    But that requires work and why do work when you can be lazy?

    So the FBI has gone on a campaign to erode your privacy rights to make its job far easier. It’s started its own air force that circles the country eavesdropping indiscriminately. It’s got a scary new law passed that allows it to hack suspects all across the country with very little oversight.

    And its now pushing to have secret keys implanted in modern encryption software so that it can easily tap into your text messages and emails.

    This dangerous plan, which basically subverts the whole purpose of encryption – to be private, has been called out by a variety of tech companies and privacy advocates as lazy policing.

    The latest, and most high profile, voice to join the opposition to this terrible idea is Apple CEO Tim Cook, who emphasized the need for strong encryption in a speech in Washington, D.C., on Monday night.

    Cook singled out campaign led by FBI director James Comey to require adding intentional weaknesses in the encryption code for law enforcement to encryption technology, such as the encryption used in Apple’s iPhone devices.

    Cook said that adding encryption backdoors for the FBI would weaken the security of all devices and “is incredibly dangerous.”

    The audience at the Electronic Privacy Information Center awards dinner responded warmly to Cook’s words.

    “So let me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption or taking it away harms good people who are using it for the right reason,” he said.

    Cook isn’t the only one fighting the government in the new crypto war. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Will Hurd (R-Texas), both members of the Information Technology Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, are also opposed to such measures.

    The pair sent a letter to Comey on Monday which echoed many of Cook’s points.

    They highlighted three reasons for opposing the measure:

    First, forcing American companies to weaken encryption would fundamentally change the relationship between government, the private sector, and citizens for the worse. It would be impossible to trust any American tech company to protect privacy in this scenario.

    Second, if backdoors are created for law enforcement could be accessed by hackers. “It is important to remember that computer code and encryption algorithms are neutral and have no idea if they’re being accessed by an FBI agent, a terrorist, or a hacker,” the letter stated.

    Third, any and all mandatory backdoors can easily be circumvented by avoiding American-made products. This would put American industry at a fundamental disadvantage.

    The arguments against are logical and well reasoned. The arguments for such measures are just lazy policing. With over 700 new hires coming on board its time the FBI got in shape instead of relying on the erosion of our hard won freedoms to do their job.

    Indiana Starts Needle Exchanges To Fight Raging HIV Outbreak

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    “Anybody need clean needles today?” isn’t exactly what you’d expect to hear shouted from a car in rural Indiana but its a phrase that’s increasingly heard as the state struggles to combat a raging HIV outbreak linked to drug use and needle sharing.

    Scott County, one of the hardest hit areas, is now running a mobile needle exchange unit, part of the county’s emergency response to the largest HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history. To date more than 160 people have tested positive since December and authorities believe there may be double or triple the number lurking in untested patients.

    By giving injection drug users access to clean needles, the spread of disease can be interrupted. It’s a proven strategy, that has been used successfully in Canada, England and Australia though such projects, even with proven results, tend to be shunned by politicians because of easy, factless, rhetorical attacks on them.

    In Indiana’s case there is little choice – its either become the HIV capital of America or take proven health strategies to stop the spread of the deadly disease. So far the program has been running a storefront and a mobile program on a temporary basis since early April, while last week the state approved the county’s request to extend it for a full year.

    Yet it took until April of this year for Indiana’s politicians to come around, as they were outright banned prior to this, and even now individual counties still must seek approval from the state to operate one.

    In Scott County the program started off slow with only four people coming by the first week. But now more than 170 people have signed up, and each day they trade in hundreds of used needles for clean ones.

    It’s clear that the program is reducing harm and making the community safer.

    Politicians across the country, not just Indiana, need to look at the research, which shows that needle exchanges curb the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV.

    If needle exchanges were fully allowed across every state and city in America, thousands of lives would be saved each year.

    So why aren’t we doing this? Politics. Plain and simple.

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