Abortion
Activists who filmed Planned Parenthood workers charged in California npr.org w!
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt on Tuesday, saying the state "will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations."
Paganism
Iceland's pagans enjoy dramatic rise bbc
National Statistics Bureau figures show that followers of the Asatru Association still lag far behind the established Lutheran Church, which accounts for 237,938 or almost 70% of the population and has remained stable for decades. But the total of Icelanders who revere Odin, Thor and the Goddess Freyja has leapt 50% since 2014 to 3,583, with more than twice as many male as female faithful...
Philippines
Rodrigo Duterte Condemned After Comparing Philippine War on Drugs With Holocaust wsj
“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” Mr. Duterte told reporters in Davao upon his return from a visit to Vietnam Friday. “Now, there are three million drug addicts [in the Philippines]…. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” In fact, historians estimate that the Nazis murdered six million Jews across Europe in the Holocaust during World War II.
Also see Duterte, Citing Hitler, Says He Wants to Kill 3 Million Addicts in Philippines nytimes
Abortion
Forced abortion and euthanasia? creation
A group of ‘bioethicists’ have recently released a 10-point “consensus statement” that outlines how they think doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers who conscientiously object to ‘medical’ procedures like abortion and euthanasia should be forced to believe in and practice them
Big Data
Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You nytimes
You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.
Society
Compromise Reached in Bill to Criminalize Undercover Filming at Abortion Facilities christiannews.net
Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Echo Park) proposed the measure earlier this year in light of the undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress exposing Planned Parenthood’s provision of baby bodily organs to procurement companies.
Archeology
King Solomon-era Palace Found in Biblical Gezer haaretz
The monumental building dates to the 10th century BCE, the era associated with King Solomon, who is famed for bringing wealth and stability to the newly-united kingdom of Israel and Judah. The American archaeological team also found a layer featuring Philistine pottery, lending credence to the biblical account of them living in the city until being vanquished by King David.
Space
SpaceX Signs First Customer for Launch of Refurbished Rocket wsj
Scheduled to occur before the end of the year, the mission announced on Tuesday will be the first one to use the lower stage and nine main engines of a Falcon 9 rocket that experienced the rigors of a blastoff and acceleration through the atmosphere on a previous launch. No other commercial space company or military contractor has achieved such a landmark by recovering and reusing the entire lower stage intact, after an initial orbital flight.
Egypt
Egypt blames EU-Turkey deal for refugee spike euobserver
"You see what has happened as a result of the deal with Turkey. The closing of the Balkan route and the deal in north Africa, the pressure has increased on Egypt," [foreign minister ambassador Hisham Badr] told MEPs in the European parliament's foreign affairs committee.
Robots
Researchers discover machines can learn by simply observing, without being told what to look for sheffield.ac.uk
The discovery, published in the journal Swarm Intelligence springer, takes inspiration from the work of pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, who proposed a test, which a machine could pass if it behaved indistinguishably from a human. In this test, an interrogator exchanges messages with two players in a different room: one human, the other a machine.
AI
Kawasaki Developing Artificial Intelligence For Motorcycles motorcycle
The AI wouldn’t just allow a motorcycle to talk to a rider; Kawasaki kawasaki says the AI will use a technology called an “Emotion Engine” to interpret a rider’s emotions and perhaps even develop its own personality. Cue the “Knight Rider” theme now.
DNA
How DNA could store all the world’s data nature
“We sat down in the bar with napkins and biros,” says Goldman, and started scribbling ideas: “What would you have to do to make that work?” The researchers' biggest worry was that DNA synthesis and sequencing made mistakes as often as 1 in every 100 nucleotides. This would render large-scale data storage hopelessly unreliable — unless they could find a workable error-correction scheme. Could they encode bits into base pairs in a way that would allow them to detect and undo the mistakes? “Within the course of an evening,” says Goldman, “we knew that you could.”
Variation in 'junk' DNA leads to trouble medicalxpress
Although variants are scattered throughout the genome, scientists have largely ignored the stretches of repetitive genetic code once dismissively known as "junk" DNA in their search for differences that influence human health and disease.
A new study shows that variation in these overlooked repetitive regions may also affect human health. These regions can affect the stability of the genome and the proper function of the chromosomes that package genetic material, leading to an increased risk of cancer, birth defects and infertility. The results appear online in the journal Genome Research. genome.cshlp.org
Medical
Contacts May One Day Be Used to Deliver Glaucoma Medication drugs
The new study showed that the drug-dispensing lenses were able to effectively lower the eye pressure in monkeys with glaucoma at least as much as the standard eye drops used to treat the disease.
Reconstructing the 6th century plague from a victim scienmag
Before the infamous Black Death, the first great plague epidemic was the Justinian plague, which, over the course of two centuries, wiped out up to an estimated 50 million (15 percent) of the world's population throughout the Byzantine Empire—-and may have helped speed the decline of the eastern Roman Empire.
No one knows why it disappeared.
Other...
View smart nanotechnology glass is in 250 commercial buildings nextbigfuture v
Interesting, though this is mostly a commercial for the product...
Iran
Secret document lifts Iran nuke constraints usatoday
The document is the only secret text linked to last year's agreement between Iran and six foreign powers. It says that after a period between 11 to 13 years, Iran can replace its 5,060 inefficient centrifuges with up to 3,500 advanced machines. Since those are five times as efficient, the time Iran would need to make a weapon would drop from a year to six months.
Also see A Year After Iran Nuclear Deal, What Has Changed? npr w!
Apostasy
Scottish Episcopal church leaps towards allowing gay marriage theguardian
The Scottish Episcopal church voted on Friday by 97 to 51, with three abstentions, to remove a clause in its canon law that states that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Before the change can be enacted, it must win a two-thirds majority in a second vote next year.
Synod members voted to delete the first clause of canon 31, which states: “The doctrine of this church is that marriage is a physical, spiritual and mystical union of one man and one woman.”
Military
China says first stealth fighter not yet in service, but coming soon in.reuters
In a statement, China's air force described as "unreliable" reports that the J-20 had appeared in training exercises, following a weekend state television broadcast that showed grainy pictures of what some viewers took to be the aircraft.
"At present, the J-20 has yet to be equipped for air force service," the air force said on its official microblog late on Tuesday afternoon.
Israel
Israeli Ex-Officers Issue Peace Plan, Condemn Gov't Inaction abcnews.go
It calls for a freeze on settlement building, the acceptance in principle of the Arab Peace Initiative and the recognition that east Jerusalem should be part of a future Palestinian state "when established as part of a future agreement." The Israeli opposition and much of the international community have long argued for these proposals.
This is an interesting, developing story that has been brewing (at least publicly) the last week or so with evidences of a split occurring between Israel's military and politicians on a 2-state solution. Only time will tell how deep this will go, but it's something to keep an eye on, particularly in light of France's 2-state solution peace talks coming up next month. It seems to be promoting much of what the “world” wants for a 2-state solution. Here's the proposed plan: PDF
Google to ban payday loan advertisements washingtonpost
The decision is the first time Google has announced a global ban on ads for a broad category of financial products. To this point, the search giant has prohibited ads for largely illicit activities such as selling guns, explosives and drugs, and limited those that are sexually explicit or graphic in nature, for example. Critics of payday lenders say they hope the move by Google and other tech companies might undercut the business which finds huge numbers of willing customers on the internet.
Ok - I can't say I have much good to say about PayDay lenders, BUT what I find interesting is Google has a) decided to discrimintate against a broad group by not allowing advertising from them, and b) done so from pressure from 'civil rights' groups.
Archeaology
Palestinian Christians bitter over destruction of church ruins in Gaza jpost
Palestine Christians on Wednesday expressed anger over the way the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have handled the ancient ruins of a Byzantine church that were uncovered in Gaza City last week.
See also Builders find remnants from Byzantine period in Gaza
Islamic State nets millions selling plundered antiquities online smh.au
According to Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, IS is making up to $265 million a year by smuggling and selling looted jewellery, coins and other precious archaeological items through auction sites and specialist online stores.
North Korea
Thirteen North Korean restaurant workers defect to South Korea theguardian
Jeong claimed it was unprecedented for so many people to have defected from the same North Korean restaurant abroad. It is also unusual for South Korea to make a formal announcement about defections, or to even comment on them. Jeong said the government decided to go public about the arrivals because of the unusual nature of the defections.
Cashless Society
Fingerprints to be tested as ‘currency’ the-japan-news
Starting this summer, the [Japanese] government will test a system in which foreign tourists will be able to verify their identities and buy things at stores using only their fingerprints.
False Religion
Pope to church: Be more accepting of divorced Catholics, gays and lesbians cnn
"By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth," he writes.
Self-Driving Cars
Toyota Joins the Race for Self-Driving Cars with an Invisible Copilot technologyreview
Toyota’s researchers are developing what they call a “guardian angel” system that will automatically take control of a vehicle, or subtly adjust a driver’s actions, in order to avert danger. In contrast to other companies working on self-driving vehicles, the Japanese carmaker sees combining machine and human driving as a key step toward full autonomy.
Robots
THE WORLD'S FIRST ROBOTIC KITCHEN moley
Moley has created the world's first robotic kitchen. Featuring an advanced, fully functional robot integrated into a beautifully designed, professional kitchen, it cooks with the skill and flair of a master chef. The prototype was premiered to widespread acclaim at Hanover Messe, the international robotics show.
Includes fascinating video.
Alphabet’s secretive Schaft Inc. shows off new bipedal robot in Tokyo techcrunch
There’s a new bot in town (Tokyo, specifically), and while it might not be as cute as Nao, as creepy as Spot and BigDog or as anthropomorphic as Atlas, it might be more practical than all of them. It walks on two legs, but not like a man, or even a bear. This one, designed by Alphabet-owned Schaft Inc., has its own uniquely robotic form of locomotion.
Includes a video. A step in the direction of more functional and less creepy robot :)
Genetics
Chinese Researchers Experiment with Making HIV-Proof Embryos technologyreview
Chinese fertility doctors have tried to make HIV-proof human embryos, but the experiments ended in a bust. The new report is the second time researchers in China revealed that they had a go at making genetically modified human embryos.
Space Tech
SpaceX just made history and landed a rocket on a ship techinsider.io
But the huge, history-making moment — causing everyone at SpaceX to lose their minds in a roar of applause during a live webcast — was when the company landed a rocket on a ship at sea.
