Trump's LGBT Man; Pick a Gender and Vote; UN Hates Israeli Deer; Russia's Ukraine Door; Patrolling the Sea; Pope Terrorism; Dirty Meat; Smart Bug Trap; AI Knows; Self-Crasher; and Sick Watson

Society

Meet the Trump admin official paid to promote LGBT ‘rights’ around the world lifesitenews

The decision to preserve open homosexual Randy Berry as Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons was reported Monday by the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade. It is another blow to pro-family advocates who oppose the LGBT agenda and are counting on Trump to root out homosexual and abortion activists from the foreign affairs bureaucracy after eight years of Obama’s leftist policies.

“The Obama administration has systematically filled the ranks of State with LGBTQ and abortion activists,” Perkins wrote in December. “Unless the next Secretary of State is willing to resist and remove this embedded agenda, the promotion and protection of true human rights, like religious liberty, will continue to languish.”

Trans Ecuadorians Vote for 1st Time According to 'Affirmed' Gender nbcnews w!

After years of lobbying by the LGBTQ community and despite opposition by Catholic and increasingly powerful evangelical groups, Ecuador passed a law last year allowing people to choose a gender on their identity card.

Israel

Obsessed UN angered over deer photo included in Israeli Nature Exhibition israelandstuff

The UN officials objected to the picture of the deer because they stated that it was taken in the Jordan Valley and not within the 1949 armistice lines gov.il. They called the picture “controversial,” and a sign was placed near the exhibition stating: “The content of this exhibition is solely the responsibility of the sponsoring and supporting member states, any queries should be directed to them.”

Russia

Russia Will Accept Passports Issued by East Ukraine Separatists nytimes

Mr. Putin’s decree stopped short of formally recognizing the two breakaway provinces as independent states. But it added to the Kremlin’s pattern of creeping bureaucratic acceptance of pro-Russian rebel groups in what are known as frozen conflict zones.

South China Sea

U.S. deploys carrier to contentious South China Sea usatoday

The Navy described Saturday's launch as the beginning of “routine operations” in the South China Sea. China claims most of the sea as its own, despite overlapping territorial and jurisdictional claims from the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

Also see Carrier Strike Group 1 Conducts South China Sea Patrol navy.mil

Pope

Pope Francis: ‘Muslim Terrorism Does Not Exist’ breitbart

“Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist,” Francis said in his speech vatican.va to a world meeting of populist movements.

Food

Fears of ‘dirty meat’ entering food chain after 25% of abattoirs [slaughterhouse] fail tests theguardian

The investigation by the Observer and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism thebureauinvestigates has also revealed that official Food Standards Agency records were falsified to conceal true levels of meat contamination at an English abattoir. A whistleblower said data relating to contamination of carcasses was misrecorded to mask poor hygiene practices at the plant, potentially allowing dirty meat to enter the food chain.

Research

New mosquito trap smart enough to keep just the bad bugs apnews

The traps act like "a field biologist in real time that's making choices about the insects it wants to capture," said Microsoft lead researcher Ethan Jackson, who displayed a prototype trap at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

Program the trap for the desired species — such as the Aedes aegypti mosquito that is the main Zika threat — and when one flies into a cell, its door snaps closed. In pilot testing in Harris County, Texas, last July and August, the trap was more than 90 percent accurate in identifying the insect buzzing through the door, Jackson said.

Artificial intelligence grows a nose sciencemag.org

Predicting color is easy: Shine a light with a wavelength of 510 nanometers, and most people will say it looks green. Yet figuring out exactly how a particular molecule will smell is much tougher. Now, 22 teams of computer scientists have unveiled a set of algorithms able to predict the odor of different molecules based on their chemical structure. It remains to be seen how broadly useful such programs will be, but one hope is that such algorithms may help fragrancemakers and food producers design new odorants with precisely tailored scents.

Driverless Cars

First self-driving car ‘race’ ends in a crash at the Buenos Aires Formula E ePrix; two cars enter, one car survives electrek.co

The championship presented the event as the first “race between driverless cars”, but the event was still very much a test exercise and the DevBot roborace development cars don’t represent the final form these driverless racecars will take ... They still have a cabin for a driver but neither car’s cabin was occupied during the event, and while the cars have been tested on street circuits before, this was the first time two cars were on track at the same time. So it looks like this was indeed the first “race” on an actual racing circuit.

AI

MD Anderson Benches IBM Watson In Setback For Artificial Intelligence In Medicine forbes

The disclosure comes at an uncomfortable moment for IBM. Tomorrow, the company’s chief executive, Ginni Rometty, will make a presentation to a giant health information technology conference detailing the progress Watson has made in health care, and announcing the launch of new products for managing medical images and making sure hospitals deliver value for the money, as well as new partnerships with healthcare systems. The end of the MD Anderson mdanderson.org collaboration looks bad.