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Big Telcos Using Dirty Tricks To Avoid Net Neutrality Rules

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In yet another clear sign that the FCC’s net neutrality rules are in consumers’ best interests, the big telecom monopolies have been caught using technical loopholes to get around the effective policing mechanisms the FCC laid out in its landmark decision.

The teclos want to stop the FCC from both reclassifying the internet as a utility and implementing a standard that prevents providers from “unreasonably interfering” with your internet access

AT&T, CenturyLink and multiple industry groups have sent filings to the FCC asking it to block specific procedures and not the rules themselves. The fabulously wealthy companies say the regulations would require “crushing” costs and might chill investments in network upgrades, arguments they’ve used in the past when faced with any sort of regulation.

While the FCC is likely to discard these requests, they will likely lead to a call to freeze the net neutrality rules (which start June 12th) until legal battles are over.

The filings give a peek at the strategy the telcos will use when they’re at court. The carriers have launched broad legal attacks on net neutrality, claiming that it violates numerous laws and even the Constitution.

Now they’re trying to undermine the rules based on the supposed burdens involved with the implementation, not the core principles that earned so much public support. They’re basically trying every trick in the book to kill net neutrality, even if that includes some very specific tactics.

Whether or not the legal armada will work against the FCC may be a matter of which court they end up in. The FCC wants them to go to a federal appeals court in Washington, DC that maintained the agency’s power to regulate internet access even after rejecting earlier rules. The FCC no doubt wants a judiciary that enshrines its authority at the very moment that companies are trying to undermine it — a different court might not be so sympathetic.

The big telcos understand this and have launched at least 7 lawsuits around the country to try and get more favorable venues.

It wouldn’t be surprising if at least one case, after many years, ends up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The telcos don’t want to stop price gouging you and will do anything and everything to keep the practice, and associated profits, going.

Citigroup’s CEO Takes ‘Pay Cut’ To $12 million Per Year

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“In part because he failed to stop traders from rigging the foreign-exchange markets” Citigroup Inc. Chairman Michael O’Neill announced CEO Michael Corbat’s 2014 compensation would be cut by an undisclosed amount.

The exact fine that will be paid for rigging the markets is not known as Citigroup is still in discussions with the Department of Justice. It’s unlikely any fine with be material, especially to executives who never do jail time over such matters and never pay from their own pockets any fines. Any fines are paid for by shareholders, mostly main street Americans who own shares via pension funds.

The executive previously had is pay docked 10 percent because of fraud that took place in Mexico and the Federal Reserve’s rejection of the New York-based company’s 2014 capital plan.

Previous illegal activity by the bank, namely the sale of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis, which led to a $7 billion settlement in July, came before the 54-year-old CEO took over, the chairman said.

In a clear sign that pension funds and other large institutional holder of stock, on behalf of working Americans it should be noted, are in on the egregious CEO pay scam, shareholders voted against a proposal that would have deferred a portion of top executives’ pay for 10 years and used the money to cover fines if the bank is found to have broken laws.

Only about 4.9 percent of investors voted in favor of the logical plan.

With no executive pay now tied to fines, the company is free to carry on its criminal enterprise and concoct new schemes to defraud the financial markets.

Miller-Coors Sued For Calling Mass Produced Beer ‘Craft’

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Miller-Coors Sued For Calling Mass Produced Beer ‘Craft’

A California man has sued Miller-Coors for labeling Blue Moon as a craft beer, it was reported this weekend. Zach Rabun of Mockery Brewing points to the fact Blue Moon is made at the same brewery which makes the rest of the Miller-Coors lineup of beers. That fact is not represented on the label and it is “concerning”, according to the lawsuit.

The suit asks for refunds for customers and for Blue Moon to more clearly advertise how it is produced and remove the premium price tag normally reserved for craft beers.

Miller-Coors released a statement saying “There are countless definitions of craft, none of which are legal definitions.”

While an obvious publicity stunt for his own beer company, Rabun has a valid argument: At what point is it illegal or unethical for large corporations to take commonly used descriptions and use them to describe their products, which often bare little resemblance to the original definition.

A good example of this is the use of ‘Green’, ‘Organic’ or ‘Energy Efficient’. All three are used in deceptive, manipulative ways by big corporations.

Take Tostitos, the maker of nacho chips. Their package says it ‘contains 80% organic ingredients’. While this is factual it blatantly goes against the commonly held definition of Organic – that the entire product is Organic not just some of it. By Tostitos labeling standards all products could make such percentage based claims.

It’s important for Americans to take note of who makes a product before taking any health or sourcing claims at face value. As can be seen with the ‘Craft Beer’ designation, it is an outright lie although one which seems to be legal in our country.

Puerto Rico Latest To Legalize Medical Marijuana

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In an unexpected move late Sunday, Puerto Rico’s governor signed an executive order to authorize the use of medical marijuana in the U.S. territory. The order went into immediate effect.

Gov. Alejandro García Padilla gave the island’s health secretary has three months to issue a report detailing how the executive order will be instituted, the impact it will have and what future steps need to be taken.

“We’re taking a significant step in the area of health that is fundamental to our development and quality of life,” García said in a statement. “I am sure that many patients will receive appropriate treatment that will offer them new hope.”

The order mandates the health department to authorize the use of some or all controlled substances or derivatives of the hemp plant for medical use.

García said the government also will outline the specific authorized uses of marijuana and its derivatives for medical purposes. Medical marijuana is used in the U.S. mainland and elsewhere to treat pain associated with migraines and illnesses including multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and AIDS.

Medical marijuana is legal in 23 U.S. states, and a group of U.S. legislators is seeking to remove federal prohibitions against it. In the Caribbean, Jamaica recently passed a law that partially decriminalized small amounts of pot and paves the way for a lawful medical marijuana sector.

Jaime Perello, president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, said he supported García’s order.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “One of the benefits that patients say they receive the most is pain relief.”

The move came after lengthy public debate on the issue which appeared to stall the legislative process. García’s move puts Puerto Rican drug policy on par with some of the most progressive states in the world and is considered to be a win for the island nation, which lacks the resources to police aggressive drug prohibitions.

Beware Insurance Companies Offering Discounts For Data

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Global insurance giant Manulife is looking to wearable fitness trackers, data collection and an enticing rewards program to boost sluggish sales and connect with customers in a radical new way.

Or that’s the pitch anyway.

What’s really going on is Big Insurance is looking to extend their information advantage over you, the Small Customer. Insurance companies make their money by taking bets they, on average, win. In order to maintain that average, or increase it, they collect oodles of data on the policies they write to figure out the odds of having to pay.

If the odds are in their favor, they give you a policy. If the odds favor you, they don’t.

Plus they’re always looking for a way not to pay. Pre-existing medical condition? They’ll take your money until it comes time to use the policy, then they’ll weasel out of the bet.

By giving insurance companies more data, you allow them to fine tune their betting and welshing strategies. It may look like you’re getting a good deal or fair coverage but thanks to supercomputers and loads of data they’ll win – every time. You’ll lose.

The insurance companies are looking to massively extend that advantage by offering rate reductions and incentives to customers who will share this data. For instance, customers who demonstrate they’re focused on health – from annual checkups and flu shots to frequent gym visits. Or installing GPS trackers in your car to make sure you drive the speed limit and don’t under-report how much driving you do in a year.

Manulife’s U.S. program, run by subsidiary John Hancock Financial Services, gives customers points not only for working out, but also for maintaining good levels of blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure, and for not using tobacco.

Other health efforts such as mammograms, colonoscopies and dental screenings also add up.

The customer is ranked bronze, silver, gold or platinum and can earn a 5 to 15 percent discount on his or her premium the following year.

This new effort to lure consumers comes at a time when insurance companies are not only digging for new policyholders in a mature market, but also building larger wealth- and asset-management divisions that compete with financial institutions such as banks. Lenders benefit from their more frequent contact with customers.

Sounds good right?

Wrong. What happens if you have unique circumstances not captured in the ‘average’?

For instance, you break a leg at work which prevents you from doing any physical activity for half a year. Or what if you have naturally high cholesterol, as some members of the population have.

What will happen is that you’ll pay more. Or, more worryingly, you’ll be denied coverage or have the policy cancelled.

This scenario already happens with cancer survivors. If you have had cancer once, odds are no insurance company will cover you in the future, for anything health related, regardless of if you have a clean bill of health.

Imagine this concept extended back throughout an entire person’s life, like our children’s. Diabetes? Too many lung infections? History of concussions from sports? Above average number of cavities? All could be grounds for insurance companies to price gouge, deny coverage or welsh on payments.

By giving them more data you’re giving them more opportunity to take advantage of you.

Insurance companies looking to ‘boost revenues’ and ‘increase margins’ are not your friends. That money comes from you, the policy holder, and is enabled by Big Insurance’s data crunching juggernaut.

The more data you give them the less coverage you get, plain and simple.

So next time an insurance company offers you a free Fitbit or a rewards scheme to put a GPS in your car, just say thanks but no thanks. You’re guaranteed to get none of the upside and all of the downside.

Wildlife Decline May Lead To Empty Landscapes

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Wildlife Decline May Lead To Empty Landscapes

Approximately 60% of giant plant eating animals, including rhinos, elephants and gorillas, are at risk of extinction, according to new research.

Analysis of 74 herbivore species, published in the journal Science Advances, saw poaching and habitat loss creating perfect conditions for extinction. A previous study of large carnivores, such as tigers, lions and leopards, showed similar declines.

Oregon State University professor William Ripple led the research looking at herbivores weighing over 100kg, from the reindeer up to the African elephant.

“This is the first time anyone has analysed all of these species as a whole,” he said.

“The process of declining animals is causing an empty landscape in the forest, savannah, grasslands and desert.”

Oxford University’s professor David Macdonald, of the school’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, was on the team of 15 international scientists.

“The big carnivores, like the charismatic big cats or wolves, face horrendous problems from direct persecution, over-hunting and habitat loss, but our new study adds another nail to their coffin – the empty larder,” he said.

“It’s no use having habitat if there’s nothing left to eat in it.”

The research shows that the decline in populations is being driven by a number of factors including habitat loss, hunting for meat or body parts, and competition for food and resources with human raised livestock.

With rhino horns worth more than gold, diamonds or cocaine on the illegal markets of China, rhinos could be extinct in the wild within 20 years in Africa, according to the research.

The consequences of large wild herbivore decline include:

– Loss of habitat: for example, elephants maintain forest clearings by trampling vegetation

– Effects on the food chain: large predators such as lions, leopards, and hyena rely on large herbivores for food

– Seed dispersal: large herbivores eat seeds which are carried over long distances

– Impact on humans: an estimated one billion people rely on wild meat for subsistence while the loss of iconic herbivores will have a negative impact on tourism

The biggest losses are occurring in South East Asia, India and Africa.

Europe and North America have already lost most of their large herbivores in a previous mass extinction.

ISIS Comitting Genocide, Slaughters Hundreds Of Yazidis Over Weekend

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ISIS Comitting Genocide, Slaughters Hundreds Of Yazidis Over Weekend

ISIS’ massacres of Yazidi populations are now a full on genocide as the terrorist militants killed at least 200 Yazidis near Mosul, Iraq, on Friday, an senior Iraqi lawmaker said Sunday.

The political party Yazidi Progress reported a higher figure, with more than 300 killed. The slaughter included men, women and children. There were no reported survivors of the attack.

The Yazidis are one of the world’s smallest and oldest monotheistic religious minorities. Their religion was founded before Islam and draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism.

They have been a frequent target of ISIS in the parts of Iraq and Syria the group controls.

Kurdish troops have been battling ISIS on the ground, while U.S. and other coalition fighters attack them from the sky. Iraqi member of parliament Habib al-Tarfi, citing information from Kurdish intelligence sources, reported Sunday that at least 200 were killed Friday. “We condemn this heinous act against this Iraqi component of our society, our Yazidi brothers,” he said.

ISIS attacks on Yazidis drove an estimated 40,000 up into the Sinjar Mountains last summer.

The latest massacre raises questions of UN involvement in the matter. Thus far the United Nations, under the tepid leadership of Ban Ki Moon, has been silent on the issue and has not been involved. Critics have argued the silence is enabling the genocide.

Antibiotics Used To Preserve Ancient Frescoes Of Pompeii

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Antibiotics Used To Preserve Ancient Frescoes Of Pompeii

Some of the most celebrated frescoes at the ancient Roman ruin of Pompeii have been given a course of antibiotics. Specifically, conservators used amoxicillin, a type of penicillin, to treat strains of bacteria living in the ancient frescoes that decorate what scholars believe to be the dining room of the Villa of the Mysteries.

The streptococcus bacteria were thriving on the paintings’ natural pigments and turning them to dust. The ancient house reopened to the public in March after a two-year restoration project.

A team of 20 people from the private firm Atramentum gave the villa a thorough makeover. In addition to cleansing the works of damaging bacteria they also removed traces of soil in the paintings that had been left over from the excavation of the site in the early 1900s.

The team spent more than a year stabilizing the mosaic floors and cleaning thousands of square yards of interior decoration across the house. They also analyzed the works which revealed a wide range of painting techniques used on the walls, from paint mixed with melted wax to water-based pigments to the rare compound “Egyptian blue”.

They paid close attention to the deep red color used so extensively in the murals. Conservators actually used lasers to remove dark stains that had formed in the pigment over time as soil particles containing the black mineral manganese became soluble in rainwater, which seeped through cracks in the ancient brickwork.

The restoration completes the second phase of work on the Villa of the Mysteries, following work that began in 2008 to reinforce the structure and to renovate roofing.

Here’s A List Of Everything Facebook Knows About You

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And it isn’t just Facebook that knows all this – your data is freely shared with the NSA and CIA. It’s also available, without a warrant, to every law enforcement branch in the country. Just submit a written request on official letterhead and you get access to all this.

The information is also a goldmine for hackers, who routinely exploit vulnerabilities in apps, passwords and Facebook servers to steal the information.

The data is a goldmine for marketers as well, with the company’s business model premises on selling it to marketers, who in turn target you with very specific ads.

The massive amount of data isn’t unique to Facebook. Every other social network – Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat and more all collected very similar data sets. So too do app makers, cellphone companies and even smartphone makers like Apple.

It’s worthwhile looking at what the company collects and asking yourself ‘do they really need to know all of this about me?’.

So as you ponder that, here is a list of everything Facebook knows about you.

The Basics
Name
Age
Gender
Birthday
Hair color
Eye color
Race

Local History
Current city of residence
Hometown
Past places I’ve lived (1)
When I moved from one location to another
How long I lived at each location

Family
My sister
My brothers-in-law (2)
My uncle
My cousins (2)
My wife
My nephew
My extended family

Relationships
My past girlfriends
When each of my past relationships began
When each of my past relationships ended
Exactly how long each of my previous relationships lasted

Contact Info
Personal phone number
Work phone number
Past phone numbers (2)
Personal email address
Work email address
Old personal email addresses (3)
Old work email addresses (2)

Financial Info
My PayPal account
My credit card number

Friends
All of my friends’ names
Which friends I’m actually friends with and which ones are just on my friends list
Which friends I don’t actually like talking to
Which friends I blocked on Messenger to avoid awkward conversations
Which friends I like enough to get updates from
Which friends I like so much that I have subscribed to their every action

Education
High school I attended
College I attended
Years I attended each school
Year I graduated from high school
Year I graduated from college

Employment Info
Career
Current job
Past jobs (3)
Length of employment at past jobs

Personal Details
Languages I speak
Political leanings
Who I voted for (national elections)
Who I voted for (local elections)
Religious beliefs

Online Social Life
My AIM screenname
My MSN screenname
My LinkedIn profile
My Twitter profile
My Myspace profile
My Foursquare profile
My Yelp profile
My Tumblr blogs (2)
The sites I comment on

Gaming Life
My Xbox Live gamertag
My PlayStation network ID
My Wii friend code
My Wii U friend code
My 3DS friend code
My Steam ID

Your Faves
My favorite bands
My favorite TV shows
My favorite movies
My favorite books
My favorite console video games
My favorite PC video games
My favorite foods
My favorite color
My favorite websites
My favorite Twitch.tv streamers
My favorite iOS apps
My favorite Android apps
My favorite coffee shop
My favorite pizza place
My favorite football team
My favorite baseball team

Events
Weddings I’ve attended or avoided
Parties I’ve attended or avoided
Sporting events I’ve attended to avoided
Meetings I’ve attended or avoided
Everything else I’ve been invited to that I did or did not attend

Detailed Travel History
Every place I’ve visited in roughly the past decade
Every work trip I’ve been on since I began my career
How long each trip lasted, and my days of arrival and departure
What hotel I stayed at during my first visit to Los Angeles
What hotels I stayed at during each subsequent visit to Los Angeles
Where I stayed during my trips to CES in Las Vegas
Where I ate on my last in night in Las Vegas, and who I was with
Where I stayed during my trip to North Carolina
What kind of car I rented while I was in North Carolina

Athletics
Which sports I played in school
The fact that I don’t really like baseball and have never visited my team’s page
How well I do in fantasy football
What my punishment was for placing last overall in fantasy football in 2013

Connected Apps
My eBay account
My Amazon account
Many of my Amazon purchases
My Audible account
Which audiobooks I’ve purchased on Audible
Which audiobooks I’ve actually listened to after purchasing them
My various app habits
Which friends I’ve invited to play apps with me

Map My Ride Data
How often I work out
The length of my bike rides
The routes I like to take for my bike rides
The time of day I usually go for bike rides

Spotify Data Sharing
My morning playlists
My deep focus playlist
How often I listen to each song
My most-played songs of all time
Which songs I consider guilty pleasures
Which songs I (embarrassingly) listen to on repeat for hours

Facebook Usage
Where I use Facebook
What device I have connected to Facebook
Every device I’ve ever used to connect to Facebook
Every browser I’ve ever used to connect to Facebook
Every one of the 127 apps I’ve used my Facebook login on

Now imagine someone got this data and wanted to use it for evil. Or use it to make money from you.

It wouldn’t be at all hard to find ways to blackmail you or cause a great deal of destruction to your life.

Now imagine what the NSA knows about you and, more importantly, our elected officials.

Germany Launches Public Probe Of NSA Data Collection

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Germany Launches Public Probe Of NSA Data Collection

Germany was up in arms this weekend over fresh spying allegations that could harm the country’s thorny relationship with surveillance of its citizens. The revelations bring back Soviet era memories where secret police held dossiers on almost all citizens of note, including politicians and government officials.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine claimed on Saturday that German spy agency BND, the equivalent of the NSA, had intercepted data on German and EU citizens on behalf of the NSA.

According to the report, BND “affected communication of European corporations, [government] departments and agencies.”

As we covered earlier this weekend, the spying included theft of trade secrets from Airbus, which were then passed on to American rival Boeing.

It was further claimed that the data was only filtered to exclude German citizens only after it had been collected and that in each ‘wiretap’ the exclusion process had to be performed. The process itself was apparently lengthy, taking years to complete. In the meantime the spooks could use the German data as they wished and in fact passed it on their American counterparts.

Intercepted material included both metadata and “complete records of telephone calls and emails, audio and text files.”

The reports are confirmation that agencies like the NSA are tracking every single bit of information that American citizens put online.

Germany’s public prosecutor has responded to the accusations against the BND by promising a preliminary investigation into the matter.

The inquest will consider whether Germany’s foreign intelligence agency violated the country’s laws by allegedly aiding the U.S. government in spying on European officials and companies such as aerospace giant Airbus group, which has already threatened to sue the BND.

German politicians, unlike those in our country, were calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain the alleged actions of her government’s spook agency.

She has publicly opposed “spying on friends” by labelling it “a no-go”, yet the latest revelations indicate she may be acting differently in secret.

Der Spiegel reports that the deal between the two agencies was first struck in 2002, meaning the data has been collected for almost 15 years.

The report highlights just how pervasive spying on citizens has become. In the United States our NSA now has a detailed file on every single American citizen, detailing their movements, spending patterns, relationships – essentially every detail of your life.

Its especially troubling because the spying is conducted on government, judicial and military officials who can easily be blackmailed into cooperating with the NSA. The spying poses a serious threat to democracy as it is conducted with no oversight and the information is so powerful it would not be hard to circumvent the democratic process if the it threatened the NSA’s agenda.

The ramifications of this are particularly salient to Germans who lived under such a spying system during the Cold War.

Hard Rock Hotel Hit By Massive Data Breach

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Hard Rock Hotel Hit By Massive Data Breach

Identity thieves have hit Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in a massive data breach that includes credit card numbers, names, and addresses, according to reports

The company says it found malware on its systems which was used to pinch the data from its retail and service locations. The gang did not make off with PINs, the company said in a statement.

Hard Rock said it uncovered the attack on April 3rd and the affected card transactions were between September 3rd 2014 and April 4th of this year. Skimmed transactions were at its restaurant, bar and retail shops. The casino and hotels were unaffected.

Point of Sales malware is becoming more sophisticated and successful at stealing vulnerable magnetic stripe data from US credit cards.

The fresh attack, similar to those at Target and Home Depot highlight two issues.

The first is that the U.S. still used insecure magnetic stripes to process transactions. The rest of the world has moved to highly secure chip and pin technology. The delayed move to the new technology is because fraud losses have tended to be small relative to the massive investment to migrate to the new technology. Yet individual cardholders are now feeling the pain of this decision as cyber-criminals perpetrate large scale card skimming that takes advantage of this known vulnerability.

The second issue this highlights is why it took a full month for Hard Rock to notify the public. The size of the data breach is massive and the earlier those affected know about it the better they can protect themselves. Some states have enacted mandatory data breach disclosure laws and it seems in this case they would have helped victims. Hard Rock has very little excuse for not promptly notifying customers affected, who now will have suffered greater loss as a result of the delay.

Australia Finds Way To Break Apple’s Tax Dodges

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Australia’s Economics References Committee, which has been conducting hearings into corporate tax avoidance, looks to have made a breakthrough in the fight on rich tech companies avoiding taxes by using elaborate networks of subsidiaries.

The committee has developed a new method for taxing multinationals from the nation’s Taxation Office.

The hearings have shown how the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft manage to pay such low tax in Australia, just as they do here in America.

In Apple’s case the company uses a structure where it pays more than fair value for the products it resells, so that the company’s business can be done in nations with lower tax rates. This scheme sees Apple report tiny profit margins in Australia, well out of kilter with the 30 per cent plus margins it reports to investors.

Microsoft and Google book their sales through their Singapore entities to take advantage of the island-state’s kinder tax rates. They also use Ireland for the practice for other countries.

While the practices are not illegal they are certainly cynical.

To figure out how to crack down on these practices, in which different methods for hiding profits are used, the Committee asked the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to explain how it might be possible to compare the practices of businesses with conventional tax arrangements to those using the typical tech tax dodges.

The ATO has delivered a 13-page document which explains how to unravel tax tricks in order to assess how much multinationals actually earn.

The methodology counts many payments made to related entities as income so that, for example, the payments Apple Australia makes to other Apple companies to buy products would be assessed for the component of income in the transferred sums.

Apple Australia has argued that it pays above market price because doing so means it is contributing to R&D costs, among other expenses borne by Apple USA.

The ATO’s delivery of the document to the committee is unusual, as the bureau has previously argued it can’t discuss individual company tax matters.

The chair of the committee’s inquiry, opposition senator Sam Dastyari, has said he expects the methodology will let the committee report on just how much tax tech companies and other multinationals should be paying.

The next step will be to see if any countries decide to enact new laws to properly tax the tech titans.

Carly Fiorina Continues To Fail Upward, Launches Presidential Bid

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Carly Fiorina Continues To Fail Upward, Launches Presidential Bid

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for president on Monday, becoming the first female candidate to seek the Republican Party’s nomination.

“Yes, I am running,” Fiorina told ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and followed by posts to her social media accounts.

The long-shot White House contender has never held public office. In 2010, she unsuccessfully ran for Senate in California, losing to Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Fiorina has been preparing her bid over the past few months, traveling to early states like Iowa and New Hampshire and meeting with activists and donors.

She has cast herself as an outside-the-beltway candidate with years of private sector experience, she has been particularly critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her work in government.

Yet Fiorina is best known for her failure at HP, a company she led from 1999 to 2005. Her controversial tenure at the firm gave Boxer plenty of ammunition in the 2010 race, and the issue will once again emerge a vulnerability for Fiorina in her campaign for president.

As CEO, she spearheaded a ill-conceived and divisive merger with Compaq as she sought to rebrand the firm and boost its relevance in the tech world. It proved to be a strategic blunder and cost the company billions of dollars while taking years to undo.

HP employees were also unhappy with Fiorina’s leadership style – misinformed, highly decisive and showing a disregard for input from those in the know. They also said she lacked engagement with colleagues, and members of both the Hewlett and Packard families have been openly critical of her role at the company.

For her time destroying HP she was paid lavishly and is now looking to translate her wealth into political power.

Ms Fiorina is likely to divide republican voters rather than unite them and will do nothing but hamper their chances to take on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Her well financed campaign, which will be her public swan song, will fight to the death to get her as far as possible.

She would certainly lose to the battle tested, well oiled and very savvy Clinton campaign and her impact on the Republican ticket will distract the party from unifying around the most viable candidate.

Yet Ms Fiorina does not care. This is an exercise in ego and legacy building. Given her legacy is nothing but tarnished her campaign will leverage her colossal ego in a bid to keep her upward momentum as she fails. For Republicans no good can come of her bid. It will now be up to the party elders to quickly back an actually viable candidate to take on the Clinton machine.

Putin’s Instability Grows As He Recruits Child Soldiers

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In the latest sign that megalomaniac Russian despot Vladimir Putin is losing his grip on reality, the country’s leader has re-instituted Soviet era children’s militias. Despite no enemy to fight the groups have been re-launched across the country with heavy government funding.

Inhabitants of Moscow’s Yaroslavsky district have largely grown accustomed to their activities, which include throwing knives and polishing Kalashnikov rifles, which take place in the area on weekday evenings. While they’re out walking their dogs or returning home from work, their neighborhood transforms into a training ground for the local military-patriotic club Avant-garde. It’s members are all children.

The clubs provide army preparation and training in military techniques to children of both sexes, preserving a centuries-old tactic of instilling patriotic values and awareness of Russia’s history among the country’s youth. It remains to be seen just what history the clubs teach, as much of the country’s recent history, such as the Stalin ear, would best be forgotten. Dredging up antiquated imperial dreams seems counterproductive for the increasingly isolated country as the world moves to more collaborative governance models.

The nationwide network of clubs has been decentralized since the Soviet Union’s collapse and now answers to no single authority, meaning that like Putin’s biker armies, there is likely radical overtones to many of the so-called clubs. Official statistics are unavailable, though most club leaders place membership at around 200,000. That would make the child soldiers in their ranks a considerable percentage of Russia’s standing army.

In 2010 Putin implemented a 10 year “federal system of military preparation for Russian citizens” that directed resources toward and expanded the network of military-patriotic clubs.

Several prominent public figures addressed an open letter to the president, denouncing the initiative as an attempt to create “an ideology based on a cult of government, nation, and army.” The letter was posted on an Internet forum after being published on Grani.ru, a news site that was blocked in 2014.

The rebirth of the clubs indicate Mr. Putin is mentally stuck in old times. He seeks both personal and national grandeur yet does not understand how this can be achieved in the modern world. He continues to practice politics the way his forefathers did yet they were never effective then and will certainly not be effective now.

Russia has been cut off from the world financial community and is struggling to feed its people even as it invests ever more in its military. It is obvious that Mr Putin is becoming increasingly erratic, looking back on history and his legacy as he grows older, trying desperately to solidify his place in the hall of great Russian leaders.

For the world, and citizens of Russia, this is scary. He behavior looks increasingly deluded and aggressive. Child soldiers are, after all, the hallmark of violent, deranged and desparate leaders. The world must take note of his mental state and be careful in dealing with his quest to achieve immortality and re-build the Soviet Union.

Two Dead After Attempting To Silence Free Speech

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Two Dead After Attempting To Silence Free Speech

Two men were killed Sunday after they opened fire in a parking lot outside a contest for cartoon depictions of the prophet Muhammad, authorities reported. The contest took place in Garland, Texas.

Garland’s government issued a statement saying that as a Muhammad Art Exhibit event was coming to a close, “two males drove up to the front of the building in a car” and started shooting at a security officer.

“Garland police officers engaged the gunmen, who were both shot and killed,” the city said in a statement released online.

The security officer, who is also a Garland Independent School District employee, was identified as Bruce Joiner. He was shot in the leg and suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was reported to be in stable condition at a local hospital.

The exhibit was placed on lockdown and attendees were later moved to a nearby high school.

Police suspected the attackers’ vehicle contained a bomb and called in bomb squad experts.

An officer dressed in military fatigues took the stage toward the end of the event at the Curtis Culwell Center, near Dallas, and told attendees that a shooting had occurred. .

The American Freedom Defense Initiative hosted the Muhammad Cartoon Exhibit and $10,000 cartoon contest.

The arena which hosted the event, owned by the Garland school district, hosted a “Stand With the Prophet” event in January.

The exhibit featured “images of Islam’s prophet, both historic and contemporary, and speeches by leading voices of freedom and internationally renowned free speech advocates,” according to a press release by the group.

Such drawings have sparked violence around the world. Islamic tradition stipulates that any physical depiction of the prophet Muhammad — even a respectful one — is considered blasphemous.

Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, planned the Sunday event to make a stand for free speech in response to the outcries and violence over drawings of Muhammad, NBC News reported. Geller’s group is known for mounting a campaign against the building of an Islamic center blocks from the World Trade Center site and for buying advertising space in cities across the U.S. criticizing Islam.

“This is a war,” she posted on her website PamellaGeller.com. “This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?”

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for advocating a ban on the Kuran, was a keynote speaker at the gathering.

The event raises fundamental questions about whether Islam is compatible with American values and law, namely freedom of speech. Our country was founded upon such freedoms and it does appear that Islam, be it in radical or mainstream form, is highly incompatible with these hard won rights.

While groups such as the AFDI may appear antagonistic it is important for our country to take a stand against foreign influences that attempt to stifle our hard-won rights.

Becoming violent over a drawing is not the American way. Banning a drawing is also not the American way.

In our rush to judge this tragic event we must consider this fully as we determine what role, if any, Islam should have on shaping our values. It appears that whatever influence that may be is a step backward and not forward for our country.

Russia Creates International Fund To Bail Out… Itself?

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Russia Creates International Fund To Bail Out… Itself?

Russian despot Vladimir Putin completed an agreement Saturday to set up a $100-billion reserve fund for the so-called BRICS — the five leading emerging economies that include Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

The deal was hailed as some as ‘an alternative to the IMF’ and ‘a step towards financial independence from the IMF’.

The whole point of the fund is to shield the BRICS against “short-term liquidity pressures” while also promoting greater cooperation between the five member countries.

Yet the move is a tacit endorsement that things are not well within Russia. Putin’s bizarre quest for personal grandeur has hurt his country deeply. His decision to invade Ukraine has resulted in tough sanctions that are cutting hard as they get compounded by low oil prices, Moscow’s only real export.

By joining the bank and nominally pledging to contribute $18 billion to the reserve, it is effectively securing itself credit at a time the world will grant it none. That credit will come from China, which has promised to pour $41 billion into the fund, which was set up after an agreement signed in July 2014 in Brazil.

The whole bank being a “challenge western dominance over international money markets” is simply not true. Russia has been cut off from world financial markets due to its unpredictable and aggressive nature.

India and Brazil are relatively small contributors and likely just going along with the scheme to maintain relations with Russia, for its military hardware and China, for access to its consumers.

China in turn is pushing the scheme to get access to natural resources. China needs resources, particularly from Russia. If it takes creating a pseudo-credible financial institution to do so, that’s a cost its willing to pay.

It also allows China to give money other troubled yet resource rich countries, such as most of Africa, on terms the IMF and real international super-powers find predatory. China can now insist on these cash for resources-at-all-costs deals and have the cover of an international organization.

The new body isn’t a threat to the IMF – its a threat to anyone foolish enough to take loans from it. The group is certain to be utterly non-accountable and if the IMF causes problems for recipient countries the new BRIC bank will cause many more.

And watch for Russia to tap the bank once all members have ponied up the money. The Russian economy is severely hampered by a number of factors and it looks set to the first recipient of aide.

Iranian Cleric Blames Nepal Quake On Women Who Dress Provocatively

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Women who dress provocatively and tempt people into promiscuity are to blame for earthquakes, including the one which recently struck Nepal, a leading Iranian cleric has apparently said.

Leader, Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi, says women and girls who “don’t dress appropriately” spread “promiscuity in society.”

“When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase,” he says in a video posted on YouTube, apparently of him leading Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, last week.

“There is no way other than taking refuge in religion and adapting ourselves to Islamic behavior,” he adds in the video.

The video was posted by a YouTube user named “electionlies,” who appears to be anti-regime. The account features wallpaper of a blindfolded woman weeping blood and the tagline, “The green movement is alive.”

Green is the color of anti-regime protesters, who last year demonstrated in several cities across Iran. The protesters were objecting to the country’s election results, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office despite being not the most fair or free.

Sadeghi is a senior cleric who holds an extremely influential position. He was appointed last year by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as a substitute Friday prayer leader in Tehran.

Khamenei himself is Tehran’s official Friday prayer leader.

Iran frequently suffers earthquakes, including a devastating one that leveled the ancient city of Bam in 2003, killing tens of thousands.

Statements like these at Friday prayer echo far and wide inside the isolated country. Iran was once a rational, progressive and beautiful country before an Islamist uprising took hold in the later 70s. It is now one of the more backward countries in the middle east, adhering to a radical form of Islam. The hardline religion is used to control the population and protect the power, wealth and influence of the clerics, who rule the country.

Jimmy Carter Dismisses Possibility Of Mid East Peace

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Jimmy Carter Dismisses Possibility Of Mid East Peace

Former president Jimmy Carter didn’t even discuss peace with the Palestinian leadership because he knows that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “does not now and has never sincerely believed in a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

The troubling statement comes as the former president was wrapping up his three-day mission to Israel and the West Bank on Saturday night.

The assessment is a fresh take on an old conflict and seems to cut to the heart of the matter. Despite much international pressure and assistance, there does not seem to be any real prospect of peace.

On the final day of his reelection campaign in March, hardliner Netanyahu said that as long as he serves as prime minister, there will not be an independent Palestinian state.

After his decisive victory, Netanyahu sought to retract his remarks by explaining that the time was not right and that the Middle East was too dangerous for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

“I don’t want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change,” Netanyahu backtracked on MSNBC in an interview in March.

Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution to the ­decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict stunned the White House, who views, along with the world, a two state solution as the only possible outcome.

In East Jerusalem on Saturday, Carter, 90, said that he and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, did not ask for a meeting with Netanyahu or his cabinet because they saw no indication such a meeting would be accepted.

“It would be a waste of time to ask,” Carter said.

Brundtland said, “They don’t want to listen to views they don’t agree with.”

A senior spokesman for Netanyahu said that his office had no comment.

Carter came to Israel as a leader of the Elders, an independent group of former leaders who advocate for peace and human rights, first constructed by Nelson Mandela in 2007.

The delegation originally planned to go to the Gaza Strip and meet with Hamas leaders, but the trip was canceled at the last minute due to “severe” security challenges.

Carter advocates negotiations with Hamas, a group that the United States and Israel consider a terror organization, yet is elected by Palestinians to represent them under free and fair elections.

Carter called the lack of reconstruction in Gaza “intolerable.” He said: “Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt, and people cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

Carter’s mission draws attention to how dire the situation is in Palestine and how Israel’s hardline stance is deeply problematic in the region. For the United States the situation is tricky, because Israel is a key ally in the region as well as a key customer of U.S. military hardware.

Nepal Quake So Powerful It Changed The Landscape

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The deadly quake in Nepal was so powerful that it has also changed the country’s landscape. Case in point: Mount Everest, which satellite data shows shrank after the disaster.

According to Europe’s Sentinel-1A radar satellite, which flew over the affected area on Wednesday, the day after the 7.8-magnitude quake, Earth’s highest mountain is now about an inch smaller than it used to be.

The reduction in height explained by a relief of strain in the Earth’s crust, it said citing UNAVCO, a nonprofit geology research consortium. Basically, things have relaxed deep in the Earth’s core after the quake, which has in turn shrunk the mountain.

But Everest is not the only geology to have changed after the quake. A region about 75 miles long and 37 miles wide near Nepal’s capital Kathmandu lifted about 3 feet, which partially explains the extensive damage the city suffered. The uplift peaked just 10 miles from the city.

The satellite data is still raw and will be analyzed by scientists over the next few weeks. Roger Bilham, a professor in geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, said he expects that the final shrinking of Mount Everest is probably just about one or two millimeters, once all the tremors and aftershocks subside.

Baltimore’s Real Looter: Wells Fargo

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Its common knowledge that Wall Street created the financial panic of 2008. Through issuing predatory loans to unsuspecting, unprotected consumers, the banks triggered the Great Recession.

Baltimore was hit particularly hard. In fact, in the Baltimore area, the black community was specifically and intentionally targeted for these predatory loans.

The resulting implosion took the black community’s wealth back to Segregation-era levels.

Think about that for a moment.

This means the the subprime mortgage fraud was the biggest blow to the black community’s wealth since Civil Rights. Over a dozen banks were charged with foisting bad loans onto black people.

Wells Fargo was the worst offenders in the Baltimore area. According to recent testimony by Beth Jacobs, formerly one of Wells Fargo’s top loan officers, the practice was overtly racist,

“Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as ‘mud people’ and to subprime lending as ‘ghetto loans.’”

The banks insidiously organized the black community to streamline the effort of preying on them at large scale,

“’Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.’”

The state of Maryland, which had been home to some of the nation’s wealthiest black communities prior to the crash, saw the second most foreclosures in the country, after Florida.

The scope of the predatory lending is staggering: Blacks were more likely than whites, and women were more likely than men, to be sold a predatory loan. In some income brackets, black women were as much as five times more likely than white men to receive a subprime loan.

It’s a popular misconception that these people needed subprime loans. Most of the people who were sold these loans did qualify for conventional loans,

“…in 2/3rd (66%) cases, people with high FICA scores, who would have qualified for conventional loans at market rates, were diverted towards subprime loans because of their profitability.”

In Baltimore, under 600 subprime loans were issued in 1993, and over 8,000 in 1998. By the end of the ’90s, subprime loans accounted for 60% of black homeowners’ foreclosures in the Baltimore area. From there, it only got worse. ThinkProgress, a think tank studying the issue, found that

“More than half of Baltimore properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan between 2005 and 2008 are vacant, 71 percent of them in predominantly black neighborhoods. Baltimore still had the ninth-largest number of foreclosures in the country last year [2014] at 5,200.”

As of 2012, there were approximately 47,000 vacant homes in Baltimore, and their concentration correlates almost perfectly with the concentration of black people living Baltimore.

American financial institutions, such as Wells Fargo, used the black community’s purchasing power against them. They specifically targeted black women and even among borrowers who had the means to buy a conventional loan pushed them into high interest subprime loans.

In Baltimore this meant tens of thousands of black families were ruined. The overtly racist housing practices of the mid 20th Century were replaced by racism by banks in housing practice.

And the results are staggering.

In 2005, the median white household wealth was $134,992. By 2009, it had declined to $113,149. In 2005, the median black household wealth was $12,124. By 2009 it had declined to $5,677.

That is inequality on a scale never before seen in America, aside from slavery.

While white wealth declined by 16%, black wealth declined by 53%.

Wall Street cynically used the black community’s striving for the American Dream against them. After centuries of bondage, a century of second class citizenship, and half a century beyond Civil Rights, many black families had finally made it.

And Wells Fargo crushed them.

Latest Tool To Help Stressed Students: Puppy Rooms

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Latest Tool To Help Stressed Students: Puppy Rooms

Exam and deadline season always brings stress and angst but the lucky students at the University of Central Lancashire, in England, will have the perfect way of relaxing: Their very own puppy room.

Organized by the students’ union as part of the ‘SOS (Stressed Out Students) campaign’, students who want to de-stress will get to cuddle puppies in a dedicated room.

The program is coordinated in partnership with the Guide Dogs charity (who will be providing the puppies) and the event will be held for one day on 7 May. The group may look to continue the program should it turn out to be a success.

Spots have to be booked in advance, so as to limit the number of people in the room at any one time, so that both the puppies and the people don’t get stressed out.

It should come as no surprise that the puppy room is already fully-booked, and the reservation list is also at maximum capacity.

The Union takes special steps, in addition to limiting the number of people in the room, to ensure the puppies don’t get stressed out too.

According to the group’s event page on Facebook, “the puppies will have regular breaks throughout the 3 hours and be with their handlers at all times.”

A separate ‘chill out’ room will also be set up for the puppies “if they need it”.

Attendees are asked to pay a donation of £1.50 (about $2), which will go towards the Guide Dogs charity.

The event doesn’t just help the student. It’s also a great opportunity for the guide dogs-in-training to get used to being around people.

While the program may sound unconventional, it has been tried at other schools before. Canada’s Dalhousie University offered a similar event for students last year and pets have long been associated with lower anxiety levels and better health outcomes.

Tech companies, such as games maker Zynga, are also catching onto the trend by having pet-friendly workplaces that encourage people to bring their pets to work.

Wearing A Suit Shown To Make You Think Differently

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A new study reveals how wearing formal attire changes people’s thought processes. “Putting on formal clothes makes us feel powerful, and that changes the basic way we see the world,” says Abraham Rutchick, the author and a professor of psychology at California State University, Northridge.

Rutchick and his team found that wearing clothing that is more formal than usual makes people think more broadly and holistically, rather than narrowly and about fine details. In psychological parlance, wearing a suit encourages people to use abstract processing more frequently than concrete processing.

Research into the effects of clothing on thought processes has not been studied extensively despite research suggesting it has a notable impact.

A similar study showed that when people wore a white coat that they believed belonged to a doctor, they were more attentive, an effect that didn’t hold when they believed the white coat was a painter’s.

There are some specific implications when attire turns on abstract processing. “If you get a stinging piece of critical feedback at work, if you think about it with a concrete processing style, it’s more likely to negatively impact your self-esteem,” says Michael Slepian, another one of the paper’s authors. He added that thinking about money with an abstract processing style might mean skipping the impulsive purchases in favor of smarter, long-term savings behaviors.

The researchers arrived at their conclusion after a number of experiments. The first two had students show up without any sartorial instructions, rate the formality of the outfit they were wearing, and then take some tried-and-true cognitive tests to determine their processing styles at that moment.

Does the effect of dress on thinking matter just as much for everyday suit-wearers as more sporadic ones?

“No matter how often you wear formal clothing, if you are wearing formal clothing, then you are likely in a context that’s not the intimate, comfortable, and more socially close setting with no dress code,” says Slepian. “Thus, whether you wear formal clothing every workday, or only every wedding, my prediction is that we would find a similar influence because the clothing still feels formal in both situations.”

As casual clothing becomes the norm in a large number of workplaces, it would seem that the symbolic power of the suit will erode in coming years.

But the researchers think the opposite will come true. “You could even predict the effect could get stronger if formal clothing is only reserved for the most formal of situations,” he says. “It takes a long time for symbols and our agreed interpretations of those symbols to change, and I wouldn’t expect the suit as a symbol of power to be leaving us anytime soon.”

North Korea Arrests NYU Student

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In the latest provocation by hermit kingdom North Korea, a South Korean who lives in New Jersey was arrested last week for crossing into North Korea illegally, the North Korean Central News Agency reported on Saturday.

Joo Won-moon, 21, is a U.S. permanent resident and student living in Tenafly, New Jersey, according to the report.

Joo is a student at New York University.

The man allegedly crossed illegally into North Korea from China, via the Yalu River.

He was arrested on April 22nd and “admitted that his illegal entry was a serious violation” of North Korean law, according to state news agency.

The South Korean Unification Ministry said that evidence pointed to Joo being detained in North Korea but that it was “working to fact-check details of the detainment.”

“Currently, we cannot announce any more details in consideration of the safety of Joo and his family,” the ministry said in a statement Sunday.

U.S. Supplied Cluster Bombs Hit Civilians In Yemen

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U.S. Supplied Cluster Bombs Hit Civilians In Yemen

Human Rights Watch has found that Saudi Arabia is dropping U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in the fight against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The deadly small bombs, if unexploded, can lie dormant and then detonate when people stumble upon one, killing or maiming them as a result. The tiny bomblets contained in each package resemble bouncing balls used by children and often kill them more than adults as a result their playful look.

While an international treaty banning cluster bombs has been adopted by 116 countries, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are not among them.

The evidence uncovered by Human Rights Watch (HRW) includes a video, marked-up satellite maps and photos of the weapons.

The video shows delivery devices falling from the sky by parachute and then deploying the bombs with a burst of black smoke in mid-air. Shallow explosions then spread over areas on the ground below. The images were shot in April, HRW said.

The exact type of cluster munition used are CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons, which are guided bombs intended to take out tanks and other armored vehicles with a blanket of explosions spread out over a large area.

If the cluster bombs do not find their target, they are designed to self-destruct mid-air, or if that fails, to deactivate themselves after a short time. This should prevent indiscriminate killing but often those mechanisms don’t work, posing a lethal danger for those who later find them.

The Department of Defense has announced it will stop the transfer of cluster munitions to foreign governments, so long as the weapons leave behind more than 1% of their bombs unexploded, but not until after 2018.

“Saudi-led cluster munition airstrikes have been hitting areas near villages, putting local people in danger,” Steve Goose, the director of HRW’s arms division, said in a press release. “These weapons should never be used under any circumstances.”

The activists say the cluster munitions were dropped over northern Saada governorate, a Houthi rebel stronghold near Saudi Arabia. The satellite map shows the target area near the villages of al-Ssam and al-Safraa.

About 5,000 people live in al-Safraa in times of peace, HRW said.

The incident draws attention to the business of selling arms, which is a large industry here in the U.S. In times of peace the sales are easy money – expensive weapons sold to customers who pay cash. But in times of war the ethical implications of these sales need to be properly examined.

It also creates negative perceptions of America even if we’re not dropping the bombs. If the Saudis show up on the battlefield in American fighter planes and then drop American weapons on the villages and other civilian populations, we get the blame and not the Saudis.

All weapons are clearly stamped with a country of manufacture, so it ends up appearing like we’re the bad guys. This has serious implications for our standing around the world.

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Malaysia Airlines Offloads A380 Superjumbo Fleet

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Malaysia Airlines Offloads A380 Superjumbo Fleet

Bigger may no longer be better for the world’s passenger airlines as Malaysia Airlines is said to be offloading its entire fleet of A380 superjumbos.

The airline has struggled financially in the wake of dual tragedies in 2014, including the disappearance of flight MH370 and the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine.

According to inside websites, Malaysia is offering all six of its A380s for sale or lease. It is also said to be letting go of its two Boeing 747-400Fs and four Boeing 777-200ERs.

The move means the troubled carrier will no longer operate any large aircraft, instead having a fleet of only single aisle planes.

Malaysia Airlines, whose current fleet is about 150 jets, went private last year following the two disasters. The airline had been reporting losses for three years.

The sale, which comes just days after the A380 celebrated 10 years of service, will be an interesting hurdle for the superjumbo at a trying time for the aircraft.

“The disposal of all six A380s presents an opportunity to test the market for used A380s and whether a key component to Airbus’ strategy for the superjumbo going forward will work: allow airlines to try out the airplane without having to spent the huge amount of money required to buy new,” an industry inside says.

“After experiencing the A380, the theory goes, other carriers will understand how this can spur sales.”

Analysts believe the A380 still has a bright future despite just 317 of the aircraft being sold over the past 10 years.

They forecast demand to rise as major aviation hubs become more congested and airlines seek to maximize increasingly scarce access to runways and departure gates.

Boeing, based in Seattle, Washington, faces similar trends with its 747 aircraft. Sales have been slowing in recent years as airlines have moved to smaller, more fuel efficient aircraft like the 787.

Two Minutes of Walking Each Hour Dramatically Improves Health

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Two Minutes of Walking Each Hour Dramatically Improves Health

Turns out water cooler chitchat may actually help you live longer. New research shows that workers who take two minutes out of every hour to walk around the office may live longer than their co-workers who remain seated, a new study suggests.

The theory that long periods of sitting contribute to adverse health effects has gained significant backing recently. Researchers from the University of Utah School of Medicine confirmed this theory when they found that simply standing for a few minutes every hour did nothing to counteract the negative effects of sitting, but that engaging in “low intensity activities”, such as walking, was 33% more likely to extend their lifespan relative to peers who did nothing.

“It was fascinating to see the results because the current national focus is on moderate or vigorous activity,” said author Dr. Srinivasan Beddhu. “To see that light activity had an association with lower mortality is intriguing.”

The study looked at data from 2003-2004, when the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey attached an accelerometer to 3,243 participants and measured their physical activity. They were followed for three years, during which time 137 people died.

“Exercise is great, but the reality is that the practical amount of vigorous exercise that can be achieved is limited. Our study suggests that even small changes can have a big impact,” said author Dr. Tom Greene.

The new finding confirm what we’ve thought for years: sitting kills. Quickly and quietly. The good news is that just a small amount of physical activity at regular intervals can counteract the deadly effects of sitting. So get up and walk around – just two minutes per hour could save your life.

New Legislation Voids Fourth Amendment, Shares Your Data Without Permission

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New Legislation Voids Fourth Amendment, Shares Your Data Without Permission

While defense secretary Ashton Carter unveiled the Pentagon’s new Cyber Strategy last week he failed to mention the provision that will send private data about U.S. citizens and companies to foreign militaries.

“To improve shared situational awareness DOD will partner with DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and other agencies to develop continuous, automated, standardized mechanisms for sharing information with each of its critical partners in the U.S. government, key allied and partner militaries, state and local governments, and the private sector. In addition, DOD will work with other U.S. government agencies and Congress to support legislation that enables information sharing between the U.S. government and the private sector.”

Basically America’s new strategy unequivocally ties into information-sharing legislation that’s making its way to the President’s desk. Specifically the Cyber Information Sharing Act. Among other things, such as allow the copyright monopoly to aggressively track and sue filesharers, CISA would protect companies from being sued for sending data about their users to the DHS, which would be permitted to send it in real time to the DOD, other U.S. agencies or beyond the United States.

In short, because of CISA our spy agencies now have legal cover to send your data anywhere in the world, with no oversight whatsoever. Just mention “national security” and you get a free pass to do whatever you want with Americans’ information.

Our new cyberwar strategy pledges DOD information sharing to allies in the Middle East. “As a part of its cyber dialogue and partnerships, DOD will work with key Middle Eastern allies and partners to improve their ability to secure their military networks as well as the critical infrastructure and key resources upon which U.S. interests depend. Key initiatives include improved information sharing to establish a unified understanding of the cyber threat, an assessment of our mutual cyber defense posture, and collaborative approaches to building cyber expertise.”

So with a couple strokes of the pen, your information could be shared with Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even Afghanistan.

The nation’s top cyber warrior is not shy, either. He is openly pleading for new info-sharing laws.

“We’ve got to get cyber-information sharing legislation passed,” Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, said earlier this month at an event. Rogers said his ability to share information with the FBI was key to fingering North Korea as the perpetrator of the Sony hack. Yet the whole world knew this so its unlikely the information was as vital as claimed. But it makes a nice example now that they want all your information.

So when CISA or its cousins becomes law, because there will be limited opposition for elected officials looking for votes and paranoid about what the NSA has on them, what kind of information might fly from company servers to DHS to DOD and then around world?

Members of the privacy community describe the scope as incredibly broad. And it also means that anything collected in the dragnet, which is literally ALL of your online information, can be used against you in a court of law. Warrants no longer apply.

Robyn Greene, who serves as policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, argued that the bills allow companies to collect and share virtually all information about how and with whom you interact with online. Moreover, there would be no limits on how the U.S. government could use that information. It could, for example, be used to investigate or prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with stopping hacks. If the dragnet turns something up on you, regardless of any warrants being issued, they’ll prosecute you.

“This authorization would not just seriously undermine Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, which would otherwise require the government to obtain a warrant based on probable cause to access much of that same information, it would create an expansive new means of general-purpose government surveillance. (Sec. 5(d)(5)(A)),” she wrote.

Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has made similar findings.

“Existing private rights of action for violations of the Wiretap Act, Stored Communications Act, and potentially the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act would be precluded or at least sharply restricted … It remains to be seen why such immunity is needed when just a few months ago, the FTC and DOJ noted they would not prosecute companies for sharing such information.”

The dragnet is about to get bigger while our hard-won rights are going to be crushed. The legacy of this sweeping invasion of privacy and cancellation of our rights to due process and judicial oversight will be nothing short of astounding.

Our forefathers, who fought hard for these freedoms, must be rolling in their graves

Lungs Age Quicker For Babies Born Prematurely

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Lungs Age Quicker For Babies Born Prematurely

Young adults in their early 20s who were born prematurely have lungs that are similar to those of a healthy older person or casual smoker.

New research released this week shows that premature infants, born less than 28 weeks of age, are at increased risk for contracting bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic respiratory condition.

The condition is particularly acute for those who receive oxygen therapy to help them breathe. The higher levels of oxygen, as well as the increased pressure from the ventilator, results in more tissue scarring in the lungs.

For a new study, University of Oregon researchers compared the lung function of adults born after fewer than 32 weeks to adults born full term.

Previous research has indicated that infants with BPD are at a higher risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a degenerative condition that makes it difficult to breathe.

COPD affects 329 million people worldwide—and is most often a consequence of smoking or exposure to air pollution. It is the third-leading cause of death worldwide.

Researchers looked at three distinct groups: 20 adults born prematurely with BPD, 15 adults born prematurely without BPD, and a control group of 20 healthy adults born full-term. The subjects were put through a series of tests designed to examine lung function during exercise.

The study, which was published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, indicates that adults born prematurely without BPD, like their counterparts with it, show symptoms of a mild form of COPD by their mid-20s.

“We were expecting more variation between the two preterm groups—with and without BPD,” says Andrew T. Lovering, a professor at the University of Oregon. “We didn’t anticipate that they would share a similar lung profile.”

Even if the subjects experience a normal rate of respiratory decline throughout their lives, adult preterm survivors with COPD will likely develop respiratory complications at a much younger age, Lovering says. A more rapid decline leads to fatigue and poor exercise capacity.

There is currently no effective way of caring for adult preterm survivors as they enter adulthood, he says.

Further, very few if any respiratory physicians routinely inquire about the neonatal period when treating their patients. This means the patients are often misdiagnosed as asthmatic, while the underlying cause is different.

Justsmmservices.com

Michigan Quake Shows Not Just Nepal Who Is Vulnerable

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An earthquake that rocked Southern Michigan Saturday afternoon shows that it isn’t just developing countries or geologically active areas that need to worry about earthquakes – it could happen to us.

The area was shaken by a mild, 4.2 magnitude earthquake, which is a rarity in a state more accustomed to snow storms and tornadoes, officials said. It highlights that while rare, earthquakes can strike in many different places without any warning.

There were no injuries only one report of a building suffering damage, said Michigan State Police spokesman Ron Leix.

“It rattled a lot of buildings and it surprised a lot of people,” he said. “We do get these once in a while.”

The full extent of the damage may be revealed later as buildings are surveyed to check for any non-visible damage. Being in a non-earthquake zone, building codes are not as stringent as they are in places like California which means structures are more vulnerable to quake related damage.

The quake hit at 12:23pm local time and was centered about 5 miles south of Galesburg and 9 miles southeast of Kalamazoo.

Other reported damage included items falling off shelves and walls, reported the National Weather Service.

Leix said he had not heard of anything unnatural, such as underground drilling, casuing the quake.

The NWS said the state’s strongest recorded earthquake was a 4.6 magnitude tremor in far southern Michigan on Aug. 9, 1947.

Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Soros Dodged $7 billion In Taxes

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Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Soros Dodged $7 billion In Taxes

It’s well known that the rich tend play play by a different set of rules than the rest of us. Case in point: George Soros, who may soon decide to pay a monumental tax bill after years of playing hardball with the IRS.

The total? Nearly $7 billion.

Despite Soros having publicly advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy, the liberal billionaire reportedly has delayed paying his own for years thanks to a loophole in U.S. law. It’s a classic case of ‘do as I say not as I do’, it would appear.

That tax loophole was closed by Congress in 2008, but prior to that, Soros used it to defer taxes on client fees. He reinvested the fees in his own fund and they grew tax-free.

According to Irish regulatory filings, Soros has made $13.3 billion in this way. Factoring in the multiple tax rates that would apply, one tax expert estimated Soros would have a roughly $6.7 billion bill.

Congress has ordered fund managers to pay up by 2017.

According to Bloomberg, Soros moved assets shortly before the change to Ireland, viewing the tax haven as a possible shelter from the law. But tax attorneys consulted by the news agency said they don’t know of a way for money managers to avoid the bill in 2017.

The revelations show that while the noose is tightening around the necks of tax dodgers if you’re as wealth and as powerful as Soros there’s always a trick to stay one step ahead of the tax man. For regular folks its pay up or get caught out. And if there’s one debt you never want, its a tax debt.

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