Israel
Netanyahu tells settlers of worries of possible U.S. action at U.N. in.reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday expressed concern that U.S. President Barack Obama, during the final days of his term in office, might take diplomatic steps that could harm the fate of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Obama's strong opposition to settlement building on land Palestinians seek for a future state has also raised speculation in Israel that he might try to define parameters for a final peace agreement that has eluded Israel and the Palestinians since interim deals were signed in the early 1990s.
Russia
Largest Russian military deployment since Cold War passes through British waters en route to ‘crush’ Aleppo independent.co.uk
Eight Russian warships and the country’s only aircraft carrier left Murmansk on Wednesday, sailing past Norway and into the English Channel en route to the Mediterranean, a senior Nato diplomat said, citing Western intelligence reports.
Baltics
Baltics, fearing Russia, to triple military spending by 2018: report reuters
"We have seen political confrontation between Russia and the West in the past 2-1/2 years escalate to military assertiveness and we do not see this ending anytime soon," said Alex Kokcharov, principal analyst in the country risk division of IHS Markit, a prominent research and analysis firm.
Philippines
Philippine President Duterte announces 'separation' from United States reuters
Duterte made the comment at a business forum in the presence of Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli at Beijing's Great Hall of the People beijing-visitor during a four-day state visit to China.
North Korea
North Korea Carries Out Another Failed Missile Launch: U.S. and South Korea newsweek
The missile was believed to be an intermediate-range Musudan and was launched from the western city of Kusong, where the isolated state attempted but failed to launch the same type of missile on Saturday, the U.S. Strategic Command and South Korea's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Also see Why Do North Korea’s Musudan Missile Tests Fail? Kim Jong Un’s Country Had 7 Failures This Year ibtimes
Military
Ghost Ships Gather in Scotland for Naval Robotic Wargames defense-update
Almost 50 unmanned systems from the UK, USA, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria participated in a month-long war game for robots, organized by the Royal Navy. Spanning air, surface and the undersea domain, ‘Unmanned Warrior 2016’ (UW16), has been in the making for almost two years, with dozens of players from different nations invited to take part in this unique operational demonstration, held as part of NATO’s Joint Warrior exercise.
Environmental
U.S. Air Force: Toxic chemicals released into Colorado city's sewer system cbsnews v
Peterson Air Force Base said the water contained perfluorinated compounds or PFCs, which have been linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other illnesses. The Air Force hasn’t said how high the levels were.
The chemicals didn’t get into the city’s drinking water, said Steve Berry, a spokesman for Colorado Springs Utilities.
Food
Malaysia To Fast-Food Joints: Please Rename Your Hot Dogs npr.org
According to The Associated Press, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department e-muamalat.gov.my, a religious regulatory authority, has asked the U.S. company to change the name of its popular "pretzel dog" frankfurter wrapped in pretzel bread in order to obtain official halal certification.
According to halal guidelines posted by the Malaysian government in 2014, "products which use the name or synonymous names with nonhalal products or confusing terms such as ham ... bacon, beer, rum, hotdog, charsiew and the like" are not eligible for halal certification in Malaysia.
Privacy
Hold That Yak: NYU Researchers Discover Clues for Identifying Yik Yak Users on College Campuses engineering.nyu.edu
Yik Yak thrives on anonymity. Whether it’s praise for a local restaurant or, in a darker use of the application, a complaint or bullying comment about teachers or peers, Yik Yak users trust that their words are untraceable. Even Yik Yak’s new policy requiring user pseudonyms preserves anonymity. Yik Yak is particularly popular on college campuses and has drawn criticism as a tool for harassment. The app has been downloaded more than a million times on Android mobile devices alone.
Experiments showed that yaks can, in fact, be localized through a fairly simple machine learning algorithm that an undergraduate computer science student could program and run in a matter of hours.
Society
High school teacher tells students that all white people are racist independent.co.uk
One of his white students, who requested to remain anonymous, recorded her teacher’s lecture with her cellphone. "And he pulls out this globe with a bottle of white out and marks over a country or a piece of country and puts his name on it,” the student told News Channel 4 in Oklahoma. “So he was basically comparing what he had done to the globe to what we did to America.”
“While discussing a variety of philosophical perspectives on culture, race and ethics, a teacher was attempting to convey to students in an elective philosophy course a perspective that had been shared at a university lecture he had attended. We regret that the discussion was poorly handled. When the district was notified of this concern it was immediately addressed. We are committed to ensuring inclusiveness in our schools."
Iowa State requiring students to give up free speech to graduate lifesitenews
Officials at Iowa State iastate.edu confirmed that if student Robert Dunn or any other student declines to certify that he will comply with [their] policies, his graduation may be placed on hold. The policies state that they “may cover those activities which, although not severe, persistent, or pervasive enough to meet the legal definition of harassment, are unacceptable…” and explain that even “First Amendment protected speech activities” may constitute harassment “depending on the circumstances,” including whether other students believe the speech is not “legitimate,” not “necessary,” or lacks a “constructive purpose.”
Medical Tech
In his basement, son designs prosthetic arm for father in Belarus reuters v
Two years ago he teamed up with engineer Sergei Arefyev to develop an artificial arm. The video of its final tests hit almost a million views on YouTube, with the partners making all the designs and software available on the internet for free.
Research
Scientists just accidentally discovered a process that turns CO2 directly into ethanol sciencealert
"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," said one of the team, Adam Rondinone, from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ornl.gov.
"We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."
Space
ExoMars mission: Schiaparelli robot appears to be lost on the Mars surface, European Space Agency says independent.co.uk
The paddling pool-sized Schiaparelli lander appeared to have made its way safely through the harsh atmosphere of Mars and on to its surface. But something seems to have gone wrong while it did so – and mission controllers are now unable to speak with it.
Clouds on Pluto? Dwarf Planet's Weather Gets Weirder space
"We've noticed a large number of concentric layers of haze, more than two dozen," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute boulder.swri.edu in Boulder, Colorado, said during a news conference here at the 2016 American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Science meeting. "These haze layers stretch very high into the sky — more than a half million feet, or 200 kilometers."
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