Posts - Americans

First Mass Produced Car Using Google’s Android On Sale Today

News

Just under a year after Google announced it was adapting its popular mobile phone operating system Android to act as a car operating system, the first vehicle using the software has gone on sale. The car is made by popular South Korean carmaker Hyundai.

Google’s Android Auto operating system was demoed at last year’s I/O developer conference, where the search giant said that it had 40 car companies lined up to use the software.

Since then there had been no word on a production model until Tuesday’s announcement that the 2015 model Hyundai Sonata will be the first.

“Android Auto aligns with Hyundai’s core interior design principles of safety, intuitiveness and simplicity,” said Dave Zuchowski, president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America in a statement.

“We launched this highly anticipated feature on our best-selling Sonata, adding to our promise of value. With the launch of Android Auto, we provide more owners with the experience of cutting-edge technology.”

The Sonata is a very modern car containing Bluetooth, a USB port and a built-in eight-inch navigation screen.

Buyers of the Sonata Sport, Eco, Limited, Sport 2.0T and Limited 2.0T models will be able to link the car to a smartphone running Android 5.0 or better to use the operating system.

But things get weird from there.

The operating system isn’t actually installed on the car – it must be done by the user.

Sonata owners will need to download Android Auto onto a USB drive and update the car themselves in order to run the new operating system. They can also plug in their smartphone and upload it directly from the Play Store.

Once it’s up and running Hyundai drivers will use Google Maps for navigation, make calls from the phone using voice activation, and use third-party applications developed for the new operating system.

Google has billed the Android Auto as a safety feature designed to stop the thousands of accidents caused each year because people use their phones while driving. Once plugged in to Auto, the smartphone screen will shut down so as not to distract drivers, and instead use the voice and touch controls from the dashboard.

The move is interesting because Google’s Android tech, specifically its voice control and maps navigation is two or three generations ahead of even the most modern cars. Android can understand complex voice commands, accents and weird names with ease. Modern car entertainment systems cannot.

Android Maps now has the best turn by turn GPS navigation on the market, especially when paired with some of Samsung’s newest phones that have very precise GPS modules. Google’s latest maps products have extremely detailed traffic data and sophisticated systems to route you around traffic.

On both fronts the tech is clearly better than whatever Hyundai or any of the other car manufacturers are loading on their vehicles.

But the fact it isn’t pre-loading onto the Sonata hints at the deep rift between carmakers and Google. Carmakers don’t want to be relegated to mere hardware providers, as has happened with the mobile phone market.

In that market only one player is profitable – Samsung. The rest – HTC,Sony,LG,Motorola, – are left to fight for table scraps.

That scares the pants off carmakers. So while they’ll test Android for cars don’t expect them to jump two feet in any time soon.

SpaceX Now Certified To Launch Military Satellites

Finance

After a lengthy dispute between Elon Musk and the U.S. Air Force, SpaceX has finally been certified for military space missions, wedging its way into what had been a tightly held monopoly by a Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture.

The Air Force announced the move late Tuesday. The press release notes that the first opportunity for SpaceX to compete to provide launch services will be in June, for the GPS III satellite launch.

“This is a very important milestone for the Air Force and the Department of Defense,” said the Secretary of the Air Force, Deborah Lee James, adding that

“SpaceX’s emergence as a viable commercial launch provider gives the opportunity to compete for launch services for the first time in almost a decade.

Ultimately, leveraging of the commercial space market drives down cost to the American taxpayer and improves our military’s resiliency.”

The Air Force may not have been as enthusiastic as their press release lets on, as SpaceX had to aggressively lobby the agency, and use legal action, to open up the doors. Defense heavyweights Lockheed and Boeing called in lots of favors to see SpaceX kept out of the lucrative launch business.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk even went so far as accusing a former official of bribery.

After the despite had gone on awhile SpaceX announced in January that it had reached an agreement with the USAF for “a path forward for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program that improves the competitive landscape and achieves mission assurance for national security space launches”.

SpaceX, under the terms of the settlement, dismissed its claims relating to the EELV block buy contract.

The Air Force, in turn, agreed to work collaboratively with SpaceX to complete the certification process “in an efficient and expedient manner.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said of the certification “This is an important step toward bringing competition to National Security Space launch. We thank the Air Force for its confidence in us and look forward to serving it well.”

Former Senator Who Advocated For Pipelines Loses Seat, Immediately Joins Pipeline Lobby Firm

News

The revolving door between Washington and lobbyists continues to resemble the criminal ‘expert networks’ used by large hedge funds like SAC Capital to get an edge in the stock market. Instead of getting an edge in the market, lobbyist firms, like expert networks, use their connections and influence to get changes made to our laws.

The latest example of what should be an illegal practice was the announcement that ‘law firm’ Van Ness Feldman announcing that former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who lost her reelection bid last year, will be joining the company to help run its lobbying division. She will “focus on energy issues.”

Yet Landrieu joins the firm after pushing aggressively for energy-related policy goals that overlapped with Van Ness Feldman’s clients, calling into question her track record as an impartial lawmaker.

In November of last year, for instance, Landrieu helped force a vote to approve the Keystone XL, the controversial tar sands pipeline owned by Transcanada. The giant Canadian pipe company is a key client of Van Ness Feldman.

Landrieu also worked to speed the approval of liquefied natural gas export terminals, another contentious issue. She sponsored legislation to speed up the LNG approval process and specifically pushed for questionable individual projects, including the Sempra Cameron LNG facility in Louisiana.

Surprise, surprise: Van Ness Feldman has a large practice on LNG issues and lobbied for approval of several LNG export terminals, including the Sempra facility backed by Landrieu.

“I am proud to join Van Ness Feldman,” Landrieu said in a statement released by the firm. “I have always respected the firm and worked closely with them during my 18 years in the Senate,” she noted. “Their substantive and sophisticated approach to important public policy issues in the areas of energy, the environment and natural resources was a major factor in my decision-making process.”

While she will not technically lobby Congress, as former senators are barred from engaging in lobby activity as defined by the Lobbying Disclosure Act for two years after leaving office, it’s a fine line between lobbying and advising.

The Department of Justice has never in its history brought an enforcement action on unregistered lobbying, and the law is regularly flouted, as senators collect kickbacks and use their influence accrued during their time in office.

Landrieu’s move to a firm filled with clients she regularly promoted while a Senator is becoming a regular feature of the Washington revolving door.

Former Sen. Judd Greg, R-N.H., guided financial ‘reform’ bills, then took a lucrative job for Goldman Sachs and a Wall Street trade association after leaving elected office.

Former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., cost American citizens hundreds of billions of dollars by drafting the law that prevents Medicare from importing reasonably priced prescription drugs from Canada or from negotiating for cheaper prices at all. Tauzin, upon leaving Congress, joined a drug company lobby group called PhRMA, a position that eventually paid him more than $11 million in one year alone.

Lobbyists, like their Expert Network counterparts in finance seem long overdue for a major crackdown.

World Soccer Body FIFA Raided, Execs Arrested In Massive Corruption Probe

Entertainment News

FIFA, the powerful yet deeply troubled governing body for soccer, was indicted in two probes led by U.S. and Swiss authorities.

Acting on a U.S. led indictment by the Justice Department, Swiss police arrested several top FIFA officials, including two vice presidents, in an overnight raid in Zurich on charges of corruption Wednesday.

The U.S. investigation focuses on crimes that span 24 years. U.S. prosecutors issued warrants for 14 people, on charges ranging from money laundering to fraud and, most seriously, racketeering. The charges state FIFA officials took bribes totaling more than $150 million and in return gave out “lucrative media and marketing rights” to soccer tournaments as kickbacks.

Swiss authorities, hot on the heels of their U.S. counterparts, said they have opened a separate criminal investigation into FIFA’s operations, this one regarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, which went to Russia and Qatar respectively. Ten people are being questioned in the Swiss probe.

The criminal proceedings come just before the members of soccer’s rotten governing body gathered for an election Friday that could see its leader, Sepp Blatter, receive a fifth term in office.

Blatter isn’t among those charged but was investigated, and officials say that part of the probe continues.

FIFA said in a statement that both the election and the games in Russia and Qatar will go on as planned.

“The timing may not obviously be the best, but FIFA welcomes the process,” FIFA spokesman Walter De Gregorio told reporters. He acknowledged the investigations but didn’t directly comment on them.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first career defining prosecution, said that the indictment “alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States.

It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.”

One of the highest ranking official charged within the U.S. is Jeffrey Webb, FIFA vice president and head of CONCACAF, the FIFA-affiliated governing body for soccer in the North America and the Caribbean regions.

Others charged are: Eugenio Figueredo, FIFA vice president and executive committee member; Jack Warner, former FIFA vice president and executive committee member; and Nicolás Leoz, former FIFA executive committee member.

A number of exeuctives at sports-marketing companies have also been charged.

The Swiss Federal Office of Justice alleges that the suspects accepted bribes and kickbacks totaling more than $150 million, dating from the early 1990s until now.

In return for the bribes, they dished out lucrative media, marketing and sponsorship rights to soccer matches in Latin America, the Swiss Office of Justice said in a statement.

The charges are the conclusion of a three-year FBI investigation. Five others in the case have already pleaded guilty: four former FIFA officials and a sports marketing executive. It is likely those individuals are now cooperating with the FBI in return for a reduced sentence.

The United States brought charges against the suspects because the schemes were allegedly hatched on American soil.

“According to U.S. request, these crimes were agreed and prepared in the U.S., and payments were carried out via U.S. banks,” the Swiss Office of Justice said.

Rich Chinese Man Caught Smuggling Illegal Shark Into Backyard. Twice.

Culture

China is known to be the world’s number one environmental abuser, from its factories to illegal fisheries to its love of endangered species for quack medicine.

A new story emerged late Tuesday documenting just how crazy the Chinese are for anything remotely endangered: A wealthy resident of Qingdao purchased a massive great white shark, measuring over 18 feet in length and weighing one ton, and had it craned over his wall and into his backyard.

He then proceeded to skin it, gut it and eat it despite the fact the shark had reportedly been dead for two days at the time of delivery.

Crazier still is that this is not the first shark he’s bought and had delivered. Last year, the same man bought a huge shark, carved it up and shared it with his neighborhood, according to local residents. The man’s identity could not be confirmed.

While great white sharks are in theory protected in China and illegal to sell or purchase, in China, with enough money, any endangered or near extinct animal can be made available.

Great white sharks are classed as “vulnerable” by the WWF, one step away from becoming endangered in the wild.

New Australian Law To Strip Nationality From Dual Citizen Terror Suspects

Entertainment News

Australia plans to pass a tough new law within weeks that gives the government the authority to strip citizenship from dual nationals suspected of terrorism even if they are not convicted of a crime, the hardline conservative Prime Minister announced Tuesday.

The move comes after a conservative election win and revelations that more than 100 Australians are suspected of fighting with ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. Over half of those fighting were estimated to be dual citizens, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a statement.

The amendments to Australia’s Citizenship Act would allow ISIS supporters both overseas and at home to be treated the same as Australians who join foreign armies at war against Australia.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton would have the discretion to revoke Australian citizenship from dual nationals suspected of terrorism despite not being convicted of any offense. The decision would still be subject to judicial appeal.

“There should be no difference in how we treat Australians who join a hostile army and those engaged in terrorism — both are betraying our country and don’t deserve to be citizens of Australia,” Abbott said.

The amendment brings Australian citizenship laws in line with those of the United States, Canada, France and Britain. No one will be left stateless by losing their Australian citizenship according to the provision.

In addition to the new measure the government also plans to spend 40 million Australian dollars on new intervention programs and community initiatives to stop young Australians from leaving the country to join terror groups.

Lawmakers Probe Loss Of Thousands Of Airport Security Badges

News

Reports surfaced late Thursday of stunning lapses in the nation’s airport protection program prompting Washington lawmakers to demand an accounting of how many airport security badges have been lost or stolen around the country.

An NBC News investigation revealed the massive size of the problem.

“Clearly there are an awful lot of things falling through the cracks and there’s just no room for error when it comes to this issue. We need answers. They’re not providing them,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who chairs the Transportation Committee.

The Transportation Security Administration must now directly address the concerns after receiving a formal request for information from Thune and two other members of the committee.

It was reported in March that more than 1,400 of the badges, which allow employees to access secure areas like runways and boarding gates, went missing at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport over approximately two years. And that’s just one airport in the nation’s network of hundreds.

This week NBC San Diego reported that more than 270 badges went missing at the San Diego International Airport in the last two years, proving the nation’s airports are highly insecure.

Many of the wayward badges were not reported for weeks or months meaning anyone could have accessed the airport during that time.

Workers are required to report a missing badge within 24 hours.

The senate investigation is ongoing.

IRS Hacked, Hundreds Of Thousands Of Identities Potentially Stolen

News

It’s not just American businesses under attack from cyber-criminals, but government agencies too. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted Tuesday that thieves managed to steal information on more than 100,000 taxpayers from the agency, though he insisted the data breach didn’t affect most average taxpayers or the information they file in their annual returns.

Similar claims have been made before and usually the full scope of the breach is far worse than initially thought.

The breach led to thousands of fraudulent returns being filed, though the final details about the amount the criminals stole has not been disclosed. Mr. Koskinen predicted it will be less than $50 million though the basis for this estimate is unknown.

“This is not a security breach. Our basic information is secure,” Mr. Koskinen insisted in a call with reporters to discuss the data breach. The Commissioner described the breach as coming from from online access by fraudsters, who he described as part of an organized criminal syndicate.

The IRS is sending out notices to those they have determined were compromised by the breach. They’ve also opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

Mr. Koskinen admitted that the fraudsters were exploiting a specific application, called the Get Transcript program, which allowed them to dig up more information on taxpayers, including their full tax returns dating back five or more years.

It remains unclear why, if the criminals could access full tax returns, the IRS doesn’t believe full identity information was compromised.

The breach was discovered after noticing odd Internet activity for the tax filing season. The discovery was not made until the middle of this month, and have since been scrambling to get a handle on what exactly happened.

From the Commissioners conflicting reports it appears that process is still ongoing.

Congress was alerted to the breach last week, but for some reason kept the information quiet, compromising victims, who may be held liable for related fraud, for a full week.

Ancient lawmakers who have very little awareness of modern information systems, the internet or technology in general found the breach “eye openeing”, despite its relatively small scale compared to attacks on Target or Home Depot, which saw hundreds of millions of victims.

“That the IRS — home to highly sensitive information on every single American and every single company doing business here at home — was vulnerable to this attack is simply unacceptable,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the agency.

The IRS will pay for a credit monitoring service for the 104,000 people whom the IRS admits had their information stolen.

Monsanto, Syngenta Literally Above The Law, Get Patents For Everyday Plants Despite Not Being Patentable

Culture

Last month the European Patent Office’s Enlarged Board of Appeal, under the influence of big agribusinesses Monsanto and Syngenta, decided that naturally occurring plants, previously not patentable, should become patentable in Europe so that Monstano & Co. can extort farmers and make the associated monopoly profits that come from owning patents.

By patenting plants that occur through conventional breeding the companies are now patenting nature.

If you find a rare plant species, you can now file a patent on it.

With the way cleared for the dangerous mega-corps to obtain such patents, the European Patent Office (EPO) is about to grant 30 patents on plants derived from conventional breeding to Monsanto and its affiliated companies. Equally evil Swiss company Syngenta can expect to receive around a dozen patents very soon.

The patents cover regular garden vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, carrots and lettuce.

Leaving aside the important question of whether it should be possible to obtain patents on nature, there are other serious issues.

Like Monsanto trying to acquire Syngenta.

While its initial bid of $45 billion was turned down, the consensus is that Monsanto will go higher because it needs Syngenta’s broad variety of products.

It needs these products because glyphosate, which is the basis for Monsanto’s best selling product Roundup, has finally been proven to cause cancer in humans. The product is in the process of being banned around the world – at least in countries which are not being bribed by chemical giant.

A merger of the two companies would mean the combined entity would have all of the imminent plant patents mentioned above, representing a dangerous concentration of power in this important new area.

But the far more serious problem is with the EPO. The decision to extend patentability to naturally occurring plants was taken by the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal. Yet the EPO is funded by patent fees.

This is a blatant conflict of interest – its in the EPO’s interest to grant as many patents as possible, regardless of the outcome for humanity.

The EPO also has the final say in all European patent decisions. There is no higher body to appeal their rulings to.

Once again, Monsanto, maker of chemicals such as Agent Orange, PCBs, Glyphosate and untested genetically modified organisms, is attacking humanity in order to make its shareholders rich.

And once again politicians are taking the money and looking the other way.

Reports Indicate Apple Ready To Fight Google With Its Own Search Engine

Finance

Apple is notoriously tight-lipped. Nobody ever really knows what the company is going to announce until it actually does. Apple stuck to this trend when it recently announced the launch of “Applebot”, a web crawling service similar to Google Bot.

The computer program scans the internet, visiting the links of all the different pages it can find. These bots, commonly called spiders, pick up information such as the content of a site, its topic, how fast the page loads and lots more useful information about the site.

People who run websites noticed these hits before the official announcement and just figured that Apple would use the information to provide extra data to Siri and Spotlight, two apps that would benefit from knowing more about sites on the world wide web.

Apple’s confirmation of the bot doesn’t come from a press release but through recent technical documentation about it that was published by Apple. The document contained information that if the Apple bot doesn’t find instructions on a website’s robot.txt file for it specifically, it will follow the instructions written for Google’s bot.

With the official recognition of the Apple Bot and some key information about just how it is looking at the pages it crawls, it seems likely that Apple may actually be working on creating their own search engine to compete with Google and Bing. Apple currently relies on Google, Bing or other search engines to provide Apple users with the search results.

While Apple gets current best of breed technology, it also loses control, revenue and gives important customer information away to rivals. Knowing Apple and its penchant for controlling all aspects of its product experience, it seems likely it would want to change that.

It also seems likely that Apple may have reverse engineered rival search engines, whos patent filings and key intellectual property date back over 15 years now. That’s plenty of time for bright and highly paid Apple engineers, many who may have even worked at Google or Microsoft, to figure out how to build a market leading search engine.

While it could just be that Apple is just looking to get more information to supplement what they get from Google & Bing, it seems likely that Apple wants to enter the search engine market.

It would provide them a quick and lucrative potential income stream and help further keep their users trapped in their ecosystem, or in apple speak “provide a seamless experience.”

The new reports also fit with previous reports that Apple was hiring search engineers, indicating it has the talent needed to mount such a challenge. And it certainly has the cash to do battle with even the biggest of tech titans.

Defense Department, Boeing, Confirm Fearsome New Weapon That Fries All Electronic Devices

News

The U.S. Air Force confirmed last week rumors circulating for years that it’s developed a cutting edge electromagnetic pulse weapon that will permanently fry all electronic devices with pinpoint accuracy. Boeing, along with Lockheed Martin are building the weapon.

The weapon in named “CHAMP,” short for Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project. CHAMP carries a small power generator that shoots microwaves to fry electronics with pinpoint accuracy. It doesn’t target nations or cities but individual buildings, permanently blacking out their electronics rather than blowing up physical targets (or innocent civilians).

CHAMP is a fearsome weapon, that can circle around and fire multiple times, pinpointing and blacking out only essential targets. This enables it to take down radar defenses in a hostile state, while sparing the electrical grid that supports the civilian population. This helps keep morale of civilians high and reduces reconstructions costs in war zones.

A leaked 2012 test flight in Utah saw a single CHAMP black out seven separate targets in succession, in one single mission.

Even way back then, a Boeing representative was able to brag: “We hit every target we wanted to,” predicting that “in the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive.”

Three years later, Air Force Research Laboratory commander Maj. Gen. Tom Masiello says CHAMP is “an operational system already in our tactical air force.”

Officially the journal Military Embedded Systems says that the Air Force Research Laboratory has contracted Boeing to build just five CHAMP devices.

But given that’s public information and the trend in Pentagon acquisitions projects, the Air Force may already be building these weapons en masse.

The Air Force knows what it is in the future and is intent on fighting its next war more or less entirely by remote control. Expect CHAMP and more products like it to hit the battlefield far sooner than expected.

Snapchat Is Officially The World’s Fastest Growing Social Network

Finance

Snapchat is one of the few big social networks not owned by Facebook but that doesn’t make it small. Despite being fairly new the company is making waves in the battle for young eyeballs, according to new data.

It’s introduced a new Discovery feature which has turned the app from a source of disappearing photos to a major driver of online content engagement. Snapchat’s Discovery feature could even be the reason Vodafone’s CEO announced the messaging app accounts for 75 percent of all mobile instant messaging data sent in the United Kingdom.

In its latest earnings calls, Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said that “if you take all the messaging apps, so Facebook, WhatsApp, whatever, Google, whatever, 75 percent of the traffic today is Snapchat.”

That number is staggering, considering Whatsapp and Facebook have many times the number of users Snapchat does.

Late in January, Snapchat debuted its Discover tab, which is a collection of media companies delivering curated video content. In March, just over a month after its release, the average weekly data consumption of Snapchat users in the U.K. quadrupled from roughly 100 MB/s to 400 MB/s at any given time. According to Vodaphone, the dominant mobile phone company in the UK market, 14 percent of all mobile Internet users are active Snapchat users, which is the same as the United States and Ireland.

Snapchat has no intentions of slowing down, either. The company recently introduced an advertising product dubbed ‘Two Pennies’, in which advertisers are charged two cents per view on 10-second videos placed in Discover. With Spotify about to launch a new product similar to Snapchat’s Discover tab, the company faces competition as well as a seemingly bright future.

Move Over Electric Vehicles, Honda Introducing Mass Produced Fuel Cell Cars By 2020

Finance

The cost of driving is about to get much, much, cheaper. As electric vehicles, by Tesla, Nissan and GM, continue to flood the market, Japanese car giant Honda is going to enter the green vehicle market in a big way by 2020 thanks to mass produced hydrogen fuel cell cars.

The models will be based on the Japanese manufacturer’s FCV concept car, revealed at the Geneva motor show in March, which is described as a late-stage concept.

“It’s relatively close to the production car,” said Thomas Brachmann, head of powertrain development at Honda. “We may need to revise some body parts, but it’s very close.”

Brachmann wouldn’t comment exactly on how many FCVs the firm intended to produce but said it didn’t want to distribute just 250 to 1000 cars a year.

The project still has to figure out the infrastructure required to refuel the cars, but Honda believes the technology is the way of the future. “Norway, for example, was focusing on electric cars two years ago, but now they want something with a longer range,” said Brachmann.

The zero-emissions FCV, which produces only clean water as exhaust, has a range of about 300 miles and can be refueled in five minutes. Upon the 2020 launch date Brachmann estimates that it will be 10 to 15 years before the technology is widely accepted.

“This is likely unless we change the marketing strategy and also society, in which case it might be faster,” he said. “But we are prepared to have a wide powertrain mix over time until everyone appreciates and accepts fuel cell electric vehicles.”

His comments point to an automotive future that is filled with options for consumers: Gasoline, diesel, hybrid, electric and fuel cell will all be available in relatively refined forms over the next five years, making driving cheaper and more environmentally friendly than ever.

California Is Giving Free Solar Panels To The Poor

Culture

In order to offset carbon emissions in excess of state quotas, big polluters are paying to install rooftop solar panels on the houses of the poor. It’s not charity, but public policy known as ‘cap and trade’, a real-world solution to dealing with big polluters who can’t cut their emissions to acceptable limits.

Companies must pay, per ton, for their carbon pollution. “Run by Oakland nonprofit Grid Alternatives, the effort will install home solar arrays in disadvantaged neighborhoods, using $14.7 million raised through California’s cap-and-trade system for reining in greenhouse gas emissions” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

California has the most favorable climate- political and environment – for solar in the sountry thanks to incentive programs, innovative companies, and progressive consumers. But most investment in solar to date has been by the upper-middle classes and the wealthy, who can afford its steep upfront costs and marginal payback scenarios. Rich people can afford to go a bit green while average Americans find the numbers tough to justify.

Grid Alternatives, which has been around for over ten years, has long sought to change that imbalance. Now the cap and trade system is providing the funds to help reach that goal. The nonprofit plans on installing solar panels on 1,600 homes by the end of next year, all for free, so long as you live in a neighborhood the state has designated as disadvantaged.

According to the Chronicle “Most homeowners are asked to make small contributions for the installation, such as agreeing to feed the crew installing the array, or agreeing to help with the installation themselves. Otherwise, it’s free.”

The systems have a benefit beyond the environment: they are estimated to save households between $400-1,000 dollars a year in electricity costs, which makes a big difference to families on a tight budget.

While cap and trade is notoriously inefficient – it leads to far more pollution than if the government just set firm pollution targets and has no corresponding economic benefit for this added pollution – the social good angle of California’s implementation reduces this somewhat.

Real people, not just big companies, benefit from the trading in the form of free electricity every year. And its hard to argue against a program that help both the environment and the poor.

Over 3.2 Billion People Are Now Using The Internet

Entertainment News

A new UN report shows that in 2015 nearly half of the global population will be using the internet. The survery, conducted by The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body, estimates that 3.2 billion people will be online this year while the world’s population currently stands at 7.2 billion.

But the action isn’t actually in developed countries like the United States or Europe – 2 billion of those internet users will be from developing countries such as India, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Yet a group of nations described as “least developed countries” by the United Nations, with a combined population of 940 million, will see very little internet use. Just 89 million will be in countries such as Somalia and Nepal.

All told, this year will see more than 7 billion mobile device subscriptions, the ITU said, reflecting people owning multiple devices such as phones, tablets, phablets and even connected televisions.

About 78 percent of the U.S. and Europe already use mobile broadband, and 69% of the world has 3G coverage yet only 29% of rural areas are served. Sparse populations lead to high infrastructure investment per person, which reduces the attractiveness of such investments by internet service providers.

At the bottom of the heap? Africa, which lags behind with just 17.4% mobile broadband penetration, despite skipping entirely the wired phone generation and going straight to mobile devices.

The study focused on the growth of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector over 15 years.

In 2000 there were just 400 million internet users worldwide, fully one eighth of the current figure.

“Over the past 15 years the ICT revolution has driven global development in an unprecedented way,” said Brahima Sanou, director of the ITU telecommunication development bureau.

“ICTs will play an even more significant role in the post 2015 development agenda and in achieving future sustainable development goals as the world moves faster and faster towards a digital society.”

As the Internet of Things unfolds, where toasters, microwaves and refrigerators come online, the number of devices connected to the internet is expected to climb exponentially.

In an increasingly connected world, the number of devices is going to vastly outstrip the number of people connected.

Twitter’s Blockbuster Live Streaming App Periscope Hits Android Phones Today

Finance

Middle of the road social network Twitter announced today that after successfully launching on iPhone and seeing over a million downloads in 10 days, streaming app Periscope is now available on Android.

The app is wildly popular, with users able to live-stream their daily activities using video, whereas before Twitter has limited them to text and photos.

In a media release Twitter noted that Periscope will only work on Android running 4.4 (KitKat) and above, which made app development “significantly easier.”

Periscope for Android is similar to the iOS version, which was released weeks ago, yet comes with a few Android exclusives such as more granular notification control, and a new “return to broadcast” feature that brings viewers back into your stream if a call or text comes in while a live stream is happening.

While the app is now in the Android store, beware of the many fake Periscope apps claiming to be the real deal. Such apps usually contain sophisticated malware which is difficult if not impossible to remove.

Should The West Rescue Africa’s Animals? Mozambique Loses Half Its Elephants To Poachers

Culture

While Africans decry western attempts to help manage their rich set of endangered animals, the latest stats out of Mozambique suggest aggressive western intervention is necessary before the animals are extinct.

The U.S. based Wildlife Conservation Society said Tuesday that in the past five years, poachers have killed nearly half of Mozambique’s elephants for their ivory. The stunning loss highlights a fundamental lack of authority over the rich wildlife and powerful temptations by poachers to aggressively fight any anti-poaching efforts.

The Mozambique government-backed survey showed a dramatic 48 percent decline in elephant numbers, from just over 20,000 to an estimated 10,300, the WCS said in their report.

“This decline is due to rampant elephant poaching in the country’s most important elephant populations,” the statement said.

Remote northern Mozambique, which includes the Niassa national Reserve, was the hardest hit. The area is difficult to police and yet has some of the richest stocks of wildlife. The area accounted for 95 percent of elephant deaths, reducing the population from an estimated 15,400 to an estimated 6,100, nearly 1/3rd the original total.

The survey, conducted via planes and helicopters, found that in some parts of the country nearly half the elephants seen were already dead.

Africa currently sees approximately 30,000 elephants killed illegally each year to fuel the ivory trade, mainly to China and other Asian countries. China has notoriously refused to confront the issue despite its terrible ecological consequences.

A total of only 470,000 wild elephants remain in Africa, according to a count by the NGO Elephants Without Borders.

The stark picture for the survival of Africa’s elephants raises the question: Should western governments and organizations take over the management of such reserves?

Such plans would likely result in significant elephant and rhino stocks being moved to locations such as Texas, where they would be free of poachers. Such plans, which are opposed by most Africans on cultural and property rights grounds, appear to be the only viable way preserve the at-risk species in light of the latest statistics.

Thousands Of Man Sized Jellyfish Swarm British Coast

Culture

Britain is seeing an invasion of massive, man-sized jellyfish off its coast this week that weigh up to 100 pounds each. Yet nobody knows why.

The slimy creatures have tentacles up to six feet long, and are so numerous that they are being left stranded on the island of Portland, Dorset, when the tide goes out.

Researchers think that the creatures have headed closer to shore because warmer seas have made more plankton available closer to land, which has subsequently put them in contact with people. They are usually found in more tropical areas such as the Mediterranean sea.

Fortunately for bathers or anyone looking to get up close and personal with the huge creatures their sting isn’t considered dangerous, but can cause a rash.

A photographer captured these stunning pictures of enormous jellyfish as record numbers swarm to the UK coast.

Last year an observer said he was delighted to spot two and hoped he would be lucky enough to find a couple again when he returned to the same spot on Saturday. He was astonished when he discovered the waters a mile off shore filled with the five-foot long creatures and said he swam among more than 100.

Latest Amazon Disclosure Shows Just How Little Tax Big Tech Companies Actually Pay

Finance

While main street Americans pay record tax levels on personal income, property and via sales taxes, big tech companies with armies of lawyers and tax accountants continue to cheat the system, according to the latest reports from online retailer Amazon.

According to regulatory filings, Amazon’s main German operating unit paid just $16 million in tax in 2014, despite recording $11.9 billion in sales to German customers. Germany is Amazon’s biggest market outside North America, but until recently all sales and almost all profits were channeled via lightly taxed Luxembourg companies.

The structure has raised the ire of EU regulators, as the company effectively pays no tax despite massive sales in the region.

“Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues. E-commerce is a low-margin business and highly competitive, and Amazon continues to invest heavily around the world, which means our profits are low,” an Amazon.de spokesman said.

Yet the companies play games with expenses and revenues, shifting expenses from lightly taxed jurisdictions, like Ireland and Luxembourg, to heavily taxed ones like Germany in order to bring down the tax bill.

Tech companies are the prime offenders, as Google, Apple, Amazon, Ebay and host of others all utilize the elaborate structures to book expenses in heavily taxed jurisdictions.

Under pressure from UK regulators, Amazon said last week it had introduced changes in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Italy starting May 1st so that future sales would be booked in these countries.

While tax experts said the new arrangement could require Amazon to pay more tax in future years they are still likely to shift expenses and revenues to more favorable jurisdictions to avoid taxes.

It’s worth remembering that taxes on personal income were supposed to be just a “temporary measure” to help fight World War Two.

65+ years on they still remain a burden to everyday Americans, while big corporations have engineered themselves a pass thanks to armies of accountants and lawyers.

Baltimore Bloodbath Continues As City Sees Most Violent Holiday Weekend In 15 Years

News

While the riots and debris may have been cleared in Baltimore, the city continues to be plagued by violent crime. Over the memorial day weekend alone more than two dozen shootings occurred, causing an already taxed police force to work around the clock.

The violence has become so bad that community leaders are speaking out in the hope community members come forward to help stop the violence.

The weekend violence plagued all parts of the city from West Baltimore, to the East Side, Govans, to Reservoir Hill as city police reported 28 shootings and 9 homicides over three days.

Baltimore Police responded to 6 shootings on Friday night, 7 on Saturday, 5 on Sunday and 11 by night fall on Monday.

One of those included a double shooting in which a 9-year-old boy was shot in the leg and an innocent bystander suffered a wound to his head.

While police work diligently on the huge backlog of cases the question that comes is: At what point do federal authorities get involved?

Thus far the Obama administration and justice department, along with the FBI, have been suspiciously silent on the issue.

Iran Launches Anti-ISIS Cartoon Drawing Competition

Entertainment News

Freedom of speech supporters aren’t the only ones hosting cartoon drawing contests to draw attention to the lunacy of radical Islam as Iran this week launched an anti-ISIS cartoon competition, inviting submissions from around the world which mock the militant group and the atrocities it has become known for.

Selected works will be displayed at four cultural centers around Tehran, while the winner will be announced on May 31st.

Iran’s government controlled IRNA news agency reported that artists were briefed by Iran’s House of Cartoon to ensure a focus on “the crimes committed by the Islamic State”.

Mohammad Habibi, leader of the contest, reported that 280 works had been selected from 800 submissions. Entries came from around the world including Brazil, Australia and Indonesia. Over 40 countries had artists submit works.

Mr Habibi told the Tehran Times that while some foreign artists were attending, sanction against Iran combined with security concerns meant most were unable to attend in person. Those who did make the visit had to travel under assumed identities.

He said to Iran’s Press TV: “Nowadays everyone around the world knows about the parasite by the name of Isis and what crimes they have committed against humanity and art and culture. Artists now have the duty to raise public awareness about this group by participating in such events.”

Graphic artist Massoud Shoajaei Tabatabaii, a leading contestant, told Press TV the contest was being held “in order to reveal the true nature of Daesh” (the derogatory Arabic name for ISIS). “Daesh tries to associate itself with Islam but in essence it has no idea about Islam.”

Report Finds That India Will Run Out Of Water By 2025

Entertainment News

Despite investment in the water sector expected to be $13 billion in the next few years alone, India is set to become a water-scarce country by 2025 due to demand-supply mis-match, according to a new report.

“India’s demand for water is expected to exceed all current sources of supply and the country is set to become water scarce country by 2025.

With increasing household income and increasing contributions from the service and industrial sectors, the water demand in the domestic and industrial sectors increasing substantially,” according to the study conducted by EA Water, a leading consulting firm in the water sector.

70 per cent of country’s irrigation and 80 per cent of domestic water use comes from groundwater, which is being depleted at a frightening pace.

India’s problem means opportunity for overseas players from Canada, Israel, Germany, Italy, United States, China and Belgium with over $13 billion forecast to be invested in the domestic water sector.

The country provides huge opportunities for investors across the spectrum of water infrastructure including both water supply and wastewater management.

The Indian state of Maharashtra has become the hub for the water sector, with over 12 international companies already setting up design and engineering centers in Mumbai and Pune.

Currently there are over 1,200 companies dealing in water and wastewater treatment in the state, mainly catering to small & medium sized businesses.

With the Modi government’s planned investments in the water sector via the Ganga River Cleaning project, the Smart Cities initiative and the Swachh Bharat campaign, the industry also looks poised to create over 1 million jobs, the report found.

And yet opportunity for businesses will still not offset supply-demand mismatch for consumers, which will likely constrain India’s economic growth and devastate its massive population.

Venezuela Quickly Ditching Its Own Currency In Favor Of U.S. Dollars

Entertainment News

Venezuela looks to be going the way of Ecuador at the turn of the century as an increasing number of items are now only available for purchase in U.S. dollars and not the inflation-ridden Venezuelan Bolivar. Ford trucks, chic apartment in Caracas or an American Airlines flight to Miami are all still on offer in the country, just not with the local currency.

The South American nation is spiraling into economic chaos thanks to a tailspin on the black market for the Bolivar last week.

As the anti-American rhetoric of the socialist administration grows more strident businesses and individuals are turning to dollars at a faster rate than ever.

It’s a positive shift that’s allowing parts of the economy to inch along despite a cash crunch and the world’s highest rate of inflation. The downside is that, temporarily, it puts some goods further out of reach of the working class, whose well-being is the supposed focal point of the country’s 16-year-old socialist revolution.

The latest sign of a shift towards a dual-currency economy came earlier this month when Ford Motor Co. union officials announced the company had reached a deal with officials to sell all vehicles in U.S. dollars only.

The move follow that of American Airlines a few weeks earlier, which stopped accepting bolivars for any of its 19 weekly flights out of Venezuela. Customers are now required to use a foreign credit card to buy the tickets online. That move followed all other foreign carriers, who made the same switch with the government’s consent, according to the Venezuela Airlines Association.

The shift is the result of a crumbling value of the bolivar, which has lost more than half its value this year, plunging to 400 per dollar on the free market as Venezuelans flee the troubled currency in order to move their savings into something more stable.

It’s a politically unstable situation for socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who regularly leads chants of “gringo go home” and blames currency speculation from enemies as the culprit for the fall in value.

The administration, while publicly blaming everyone but itself, likely sees a limited dollarization as the only way to stop multinationals from leaving the country, as Clorox did last year.

Clorox left because of problems brought about by decade-old currency controls, supply shortages and inflation that hit 68 percent last year. Economists believe the rate of inflation this year will reach well into the triple digits.

The move by Ford to accept only dollars comes as production has fallen by 90 percent due to struggles to gain access to dollars needed to import parts.

Customers now have to transfer to Ford U.S. dollars in advance of delivery, so that Ford can pay for the import of the parts needed to assemble the cars in Venezuela, according to union officials.

Launch Failures Isn’t Only Problem At Russian Space Program: Agency Lost $1.8 Billion Last Year Due To Corruption

Entertainment News

The the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, is currently the only way for astronauts to come and go from the international space station. It’s also seen 2 launch failures in the past 60 days, exposing serious problems at the space agency.

The full extent of the problems are becoming apparent after revelations that Roscosmos managed to “lose” 92 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) last year, due to insider dealing, corruption, striking workers, and the construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome (“Eastern Spaceport”).

The financial catastrophe has left the space agency on the brink of collapse.

The agency will now be replaced by a state corporation during the second half of 2015, in a seemingly futile effort to stem the losses.

Tatyana Golikova, head of the Account Chamber of Russia (similar to the U.S GAO) told the Russian Federal Assembly of her shock upon discovering just how much Roscosmos had misplaced.

“At first I could not believe my inspectors,” she said on Friday.

Vladimir Putin has already announced he will personally oversee the facility’s development, despite many of the issues stemming from his dirty political maneuvering, which favors loyalists of his regime and encourages corruption so long as it keeps him in office.

The construction of the new spaceport is considered a necessary replacement to the Baikonur Cosmodrone, located in Kazakhstan, which has been Russia’s only launching facility since the first space missions over 50 years ago.

Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy Prime Minister, has blamed the two failed space launches on corruption in the space industry. “With such a level of moral decay, one should not be surprised at the high accident rate.”

It remains to be seen how the Putin regime, with notoriously low morals, will help and not hurt the once independent space agency.

In fact the latest actions to bring the independent space agency under control could in fact be a land grab, as more control by Putin and his cronies could result in more graft flowing their way.

Rogozin confirmed over the weekend that the upper house of the Russian legislature had approved the abolition of Roscosmos, although the new state corporation will also be called Roscosmos.

The Moscow Times reported that “while the old Roscosmos was responsible primarily for mission planning, with other state entities building and designing space equipment, the new Roscosmos will unite all elements of the space process under one house.”

Volcano Eruption On Pristine Galapagos Islands Threatens Rare Pink Iguanas

Culture

Sometimes nature, without any interference from humans, can destroy itself. That’s exactly what could be happening in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, as a volcano perched atop one of the remote islands erupted in the early hours of Monday.

The ash and lava flows could mean the end of a unique species of pink iguana.

The 1.1 mile high Wolf volcano is located on Isabela Island, home to a rich array of flora and fauna typical of the island chain that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution following his visit in 1835.

“The Wolf volcano is not located near a populated area. There is not risk for the human population. This is the only population of pink iguanas in the world,” Galapagos National Park said in a tweet.

The park posted pictures that showed lava pouring down the sides of the Wolf volcano, the highest point in the island chain, while a dark plume of smoke and ash estimated to be 6.4 miles high, billowed above.

Wolf hasn’t seen an eruption in 33 years, according to the park.

For the moment the lava is flowing down the volcano’s southern side while the iguanas, an endangered species, live on the opposite side, the Environment Ministry said in a statement, adding it expected the animals to escape harm if the current eruption continues as it has been.

The lava flow could still harm marine life as it enters the ocean, the Geophysics Institute said separately. While much of the islands are safe from the immediate eruption, the institute feared damage caused by the ash cloud, which could bury whole villages and vast swaths of animal habitat.

The eruption follows seismic activity in April from another volcano on Isabela Island, the archipelago’s biggest, which yellow iguanas and giant turtles also call home.

The eruption in Ecuador follows eruptions in Chile, another South American country located on what is called the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Chinese Hackers Can Track Subway Riders Through Their Phones

News

Just because there’s no signal in underground subway tunnels doesn’t mean hackers can’t track you as you ride the rails. New research shows that clever hackers can track the movements of millions of subway riders around the world by breaking into smartphone motion detectors, new research from Chinese academics reveals.

The attack tracks subway riders with 92 percent accuracy.

The ability to track subway riders represents a significant security threat to the tens of millions of people who use public transportation each day, especially military officials and senior civil service employees.

There are more than 5.5 million daily New York City subway passengers, representing a broad swatch of government, law enforcement, judiciary and industry who are exposed to tracking.

“If an attacker can trace a smartphone user for a few days, he may be able to infer the user’s daily schedule and living/working areas and thus seriously threaten her physical safety,” wrote Jingyu Hua, Zhenyu Shen, and Sheng Zhong of Nanjing University. “Another interesting example is that if the attacker finds Alice and Bob often visit the same stations at similar non-working times, he may infer that Bob is dating Alice.”

Smartphones are considered God’s gift to spies. They offer a wide variety of tracking tools, from the browser to the GPS sensor, and they stay with their owners all day, every day. In short, they’re the perfect spy technology.

What is particularly startling about the new research is that it works without either cell service or GPS, both of which are heavily protected from attackers and won’t work underground anyway.

Motion sensors, like the accelerometer that enables screen rotation, are in theory less useful to an attacker yet can still be vulnerable and can give vital information away.

In this case they can be used to infer location because every subway in the world has a unique fingerprint, the researchers found, and every time a train runs between two stations, that fingerprint can be read in the accelerometer, giving hackers access to crucial positioning information.

“The cause is that metro trains run on tracks, making their motion patterns distinguishable from cars or buses running on ordinary roads,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, due to the fact that there are no two pairs of neighboring stations whose connecting tracks are exactly the same in the real world, the motion patterns of the train within different intervals are distinguishable as well.”

The researchers attack learns each subway’s fingerprint and then installs malware on a target’s phone that steals accelerometer readings and maps their patterns back to the unique train fingerprints.

The researchers confirmed their findings by performing experiments in China by tracking volunteers carrying smartphones through subways in Nanjing. The accuracy of their lcoation tracking reached 70 to 92 percent.

The attack is “more effective and powerful than using GPS or cellular network to trace metro passengers,” the researchers said, because accelerometers aren’t protected the way GPS and cell networks are in the phone’s security settings.

An accelerometer can, in fact, be accessed, run, and read without the user knowing, while smartphones display indicators pop up when GPS or cell service is being used, tipping the user off that something is running in the background.

Sudan Confiscates Newspapers That Report Sexual Assaults

Entertainment News

Sudan’s brutal crackdown on freedom of speech continued this weekend as government forces confiscated issues of 10 major newspapers on Sunday, because they carried stories reporting of sexual assaults on children in the country, newspaper editors and a security source confirmed.

The newspapers published a story on Sunday about a speech by an activist who said rape and sexual harassment were common on vehicles taking children to school.

Security forces entered the newspapers’ printing facilities late Sunday night and early Monday morning to confiscate the entire print runs of Monday’s editions, which contained the shocking accounts.

Such crackdowns on press and political freedoms by security forces have becomes commonplace after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir won another term in elections last monthy. Security services performed a similar confiscation on the entire print runs of 14 newspapers in February.

In that case authorities refused to give a reason for the confiscation, said Ashraf Abdel Aziz, editor-in-chief of Al-Jareeda newspaper.

“Today we disrupted the distribution of 10 newspapers … for having yesterday published irresponsibly on the subjects of crimes of harassment and rape,” the source at the National Intelligence and Security Service said.

The statement said that four of the newspapers would be prevented from publishing for several more days, while the state may pursue charges against some of the newspapers and their editors.

EU To Fight Insane British Plan To Censor The Internet

Entertainment News

British PM David Cameron fancies himself just the man to “clean up the internet”. Such rhetoric, which pulls on parental heartstrings, seems to have worked for his last election campaign where he suggested that access to porn on computers and mobiles should be blocked by default unless users specifically requested access to it.

Such an unfair opt-in system was mentioned frequently in the run-up to the election as UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid assured people that the party “will age restrict online porn”.

Yet such a scheme amounts to censorship and violates net neutrality, is there is no hard and fast defintion for what is ‘porn’ and what is not. Given the difficulty of telling which is which there is also a problem for the decision process: if a site is misclassified, how can it be removed from the list.

Further, in the UK, which already runs such a list, it has quickly expanded to include a whole host of sites deemed unsavory despite being nothing to do with porn.

The list, as it turns out, has become good old fashioned censorship, where the government simply control what people can access and what they cannot.

And then there is the small problem of Europe. A leaked EU Council document shows that plans are afoot to stop Cameron’s plans in its tracks. Yet with the UK on the verge of trying to get a better deal for itself within Europe, the Prime Minister doesn’t seem strongly positioned for negotiating on the issue.

Cameron has a fight on his hands, if wants to deliver on his “we need to protect our children from hardcore pornography” promise.

Specially, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times newspaper, the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to automatically block access to obscene material.

Rather than implementing a default block on pornography, the Council of the European Union believes in an opt-out system, precisely the opposite to the way Cameron would like things to work.

The subject of censoring the internet is written about in a document on the topic on net neutrality.

In order to preserve net neutrality users would to explicitly ask their providers to block access to content, and would retain the ability to “withdraw this consent at any time”.

David Carr from the advisory board of the UK council on Child Internet Safety reacted to the document by stating: “The risk is that a major plank of the UK’s approach to online child protection will be destroyed at a stroke”.

Hopefully we are so lucky.

Fear Of Another ISIS Leads U.S. To Keep Troops In Afghanistan For Years To Come

Entertainment News

At the beginning of May, NATO announced plans to keep troops in Afghanistan past 2016. On Monday, General John Campbell, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said it was probably that troops would remain for years to come.

“There is overwhelming support to do something,” Campbell said of NATO’s sentiment on the war, and while no one seems able to define what “something” is going to be, it seems a sure bet it’s going to take years.

Gen. Campbell cited Afghan military struggles in his comments, saying there were “capacity gaps” that NATO and the U.S. would be filling for a long time to come.

Those comments ring of similar issues currently facing the Iraqi army in their struggle with ISIS. Lack of training and weapons, combined with little willpower to actually fight enemies have seen the army overwhelmed in recent weeks by superior ISIS forces.

Afghanistan, like the middle east, has a large number of armed clans who could easily join forces, just like ISIS, and quickly overthrow the government. Or they could fight each other, tearing the country apart like they did in the 90s. Either case produces well armed, well financed (thanks to Opium exports) military forces.

The longer the U.S. stays, the less likely either scenario becomes.

The occupation of Afghanistan has always technically been open-ended, but it seems to be getting even moreso in recent weeks. That means efforts to kick-start peace talks with the Taliban will be put on hold, given the Taliban have made any talks conditional on the withdrawal of international forces. Absent that, the war will continue indefinitely.

Israel Refuses To Pay Debt Owed To Iran

Entertainment News

Israel is taking sanctions to a whole new level by refusing to comply with a Swiss court order that it pay $1.1 billion. The debt dates to before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, for its share of a jointly owned oil pipeline.

“Without referring to the matter at hand, we’ll note that according to the Trading with the Enemy Act it is forbidden to transfer money to the enemy, including the Iranian national oil company,” the Israeli Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The complex dispute began in 1968, when non-Islamist Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled Iran. The Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Co. (EAPC) was created as a joint venture between an Israeli company, Trans-Asiatic Oil Ltd. (TAO), and the National Iranian Oil Co. to supply Iranian oil to Europe.

The oil was taken by boat to the Israeli port of Eilat at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, where it then moved through a network of pipelines to Ashkelon on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, then to the northern Israeli port of Haifa and eventually on to European customers.

The Iranians provided 14.75 million cubic meters of crude oil through the EAPC, earning $450 million for TAO.

With the two countries now at war, EAPC is the sole operator of more than 450 miles of the EAPC pipelines in Israel.

Prior to Iran’s revolution, the two countries were allied against the Sunni Muslim Arab nations in the region, who chafed against both a Jewish state in the Middle East and against Iran, a country that predominantly adheres to rival Shi’a Islam.

Now Iran and Israel are sworn enemies, with Tehran providing billions of dollars in military and financial aid to terror groups aligned against Israel, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

After the revolution, which saw Iran declare Israel an enemy, Israel expropriated all Iran’s assets in its territory. That included nationalizing the pipeline.

The legal saga has gone on for years, with rulings consistently in Iran’s favor. Yet these, and the latest ruling, are likely to mean little given the animosity between the two countries who appear more on course for outright war than reconciliation.