News You Can Use

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mes5464
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Google is a monopoly — and it's crushing the internet
Then Google came up with an idea for "Featured Snippets," which places answers to search queries at the top of the search page. Instead of having to click through to find the answer to a question, it will simply tell you a summary of the top search results.

Before rolling it out, Google asked Warner if they could scrape his data and credit him. Warner declined, but Google did it anyway. The algorithm they use for the snippets is notoriously error-prone — and worse, the celebrity net worth ones often failed to credit his site. Many would scrape other sites that had themselves aggregated CelebrityNetWorth.com. The overall result was devastating:

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mes5464
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Why is it that similar news stories come out at the same time?


California's 'weed nuns' on a mission to heal with cannabis | Reuters
The Sisters of the Valley, California's self-ordained "weed nuns," are on a mission to heal and empower women with their cannabis products.

Based near the town of Merced in the Central Valley, which produces over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States, the Sisters of the Valley grow and harvest their own cannabis plants.

The sisterhood stresses that its seven members, despite the moniker, do not belong to any order of the Catholic Church.

"We're against religion, so we're not a religion. We consider ourselves Beguine revivalists, and we reach back to pre-Christian practices,” said 58-year-old Sister Kate, who founded the sisterhood in 2014.

The group says its Holy Trinity is the marijuana plant, specifically hemp, a strain of marijuana that has very low levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in the plant.


Marijuana on Religious Grounds? A Cannabis Church Opens in Denver - The New York Times
For the International Church of Cannabis in Denver, there were three reasons to celebrate on Thursday.

First, it was opening day. The church, a more than century-old building recently adorned with brightly colored paintings by the artists Kenny Scharf and Okuda San Miguel, welcomed the public early in the afternoon, at which time no cannabis consumption was allowed inside.

“It seemed to be a nice steady flow of people,” said Lee Molloy, a founder of the church and a member, who estimated that a couple of hundred people had come by.

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mes5464
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Police across US spending big on James Bond gadgetry to fight crime
Forget about stun guns and body cams; the next generation of police gadgets are designed to prevent police from ever being in the line of fire, while helping save lives. Police and sheriff's departments across the country are investing in new tools that employ the latest in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to protect law enforcement and the public. They may even ultimately save money.

There are a number of new gadgets that sound like something out of James Bond: gunshot detection systems from a company called Shotspotter that can pinpoint the exact source of a gunshot. A system from a company called Starchase shoots GPS-enabled darts to attach to, and then track, vehicles fleeing from the site of a crime.

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Dutch 'abortion boat' arrives off Mexico
Ixtapa (Mexico) (AFP) - A Dutch sailing boat offering abortions, often in defiance of some country's laws, arrived in international waters off Mexico, the organization crewing it said.

The "Women on Waves" vessel was expelled from near Guatemala in February without carrying out a single pregnancy termination.

It had taken up position off Guerrero state, on Mexico's Pacific coast.

The "Women on Waves" group said in an online statement that it was offering "free legal medical abortions till 9 weeks of pregnancy" to women who needed them. It said its ship "has all required permits" and would receive women until Sunday.

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Man guilty of leaving car idling in driveway, fine: $128
ROSEVILLE, Mich. — A man who fought a $128 ticket for leaving his car running was on the losing end of a court case earlier this week and may appeal the ruling.

Taylor Trupiano, 24, who lives in this suburb about 20 miles north of Detroit, was warming up his car in his driveway Jan. 5 when he ran inside to get his girlfriend and her 2-year-old son. That 10 minutes or so was enough time for a Roseville officer to issue him a citation because he was in violation of a state law intended to hamper car theft.

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Joel
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CNN Squirms As Jeff Sessions Hints At Further Media Prosecution

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The Shadowy Extremist Group Behind the Anti-Trump Riots | LifeZette
On April 15, a pro-Trump, pro-free-speech rally at University of California, Berkeley, descended into violent mayhem after radical far-leftists — members of the organization Antifa — began to attack the peacefully assembled crowd.

Antifa, which stands for “anti-fascist action,” is a network of loosely affiliated far-left anarchist and communist groups that orchestrate violent protests and attacks on populists, conservatives, and anyone else its members deem to be “fascists” or “Nazis.”

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Teens Commandeer BART Train, Rob Passengers At Coliseum Station « CBS San Francisco
(CBS SF) — Passengers on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train were robbed, and in some cases beaten, when dozens of juveniles stormed aboard the train and forced them to give up their property, police said.

The incident happened at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Coliseum Station in Oakland aboard a Dublin/Pleasanton-bound train.

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mes5464
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Eerie tech promises to copy anyone's voice from just 1 minute of audio
I’m not sure how I feel about the upcoming launch of Montreal-based Lyrebird’s new service. The company says its API will let you synthesize speech in anyone’s voice from just a minute-long recording – which means you could, for instance, generate a clip of President Trump declaring war on Canada.

Lyrebird has posted some audio examples that sound pretty convincing (listen below, and find more on this page). The company says that it doesn’t require the speaker to say the words that you’ll use the voice to speak in the audio you generate, and it’ll also be able to create different intonations.

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NSA Blimp Spied in the United States
TO RESIDENTS OF MARYLAND, catching an occasional glimpse of a huge white blimp floating in the sky is not unusual. For more than a decade, the military has used the state as a proving ground for new airships destined for Afghanistan or Iraq. But less known is that the test flights have sometimes served a more secretive purpose involving National Security Agency surveillance.

Back in 2004, a division of the NSA called the National Tactical Integration Office fitted a 62-foot diameter airship called the Hover Hammer with an eavesdropping device, according to a classified document published Monday by The Intercept. The agency launched the three-engine airship at an airfield near Solomons Island, Maryland. And from there, the blimp was able to vacuum up “international shipping data emanating from the Long Island, New York area,” the document says. The spy equipment on the airship was called Digital Receiver Technology — a proprietary system manufactured by a Maryland-based company of the same name — which can intercept wireless communications, including cellphone calls.

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The Media Bubble is Real — And Worse Than You Think - POLITICO Magazine
The answer to the press’ myopia lies elsewhere, and nobody has produced a better argument for how the national media missed the Trump story than FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. “As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,” Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon said. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no @#$!%&! idea what’s going on.”

Illustration by DataPoint; data reporting by Tucker Doherty
But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there’s another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming “bias” and “conspiracy,” or counting D’s and R’s. That’s to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed.

The results read like a revelation. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.

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Hannity: Liberal 'fascism' trying to silence every conservative voice | TheHill
Fox News host Sean Hannity late Monday blasted "liberal fascists" who he said are attempting to "silence" conservative voices.

"I have to start by addressing a well-orchestrated effort by the intolerant left in this country that is designed to silence every conservative voice and by any means necessary," Hannity said during his monologue.
 
"Now, I’m speaking out tonight so that you, our audience, will understand what is really happening and what is at stake when it comes to freedom of speech in this country."
 
Hannity said there have always been efforts during his time at Fox News to "smear and slander and besmirch" him. But those efforts have not been as "intense and completely insane" as they are now, he added.

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Facebook's thought police
Attention quickly focused on a BuzzFeed story about traffic generated by stories on Facebook, and how much more popular fake news was over real news. The analysis had significant flaws, however, beginning with the fact that there was no evidence of correlation between Facebook traffic and voting behavior, let alone causation. Furthermore, the top five "real news" articles in the analysis turned out to be four opinion essays opposing Trump and the New York Post's story on Melania Trump's suggestive modeling pictures from two decades earlier.

Nonetheless, much of the left and the mainstream media stuck with the fake news narrative to explain the election outcome, and have continued to pressure Facebook to take action against it.

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Scientists create 'artificial womb' that could save premature babies' lives | The Independent
Extremely premature babies could be kept alive in future using an “artificial womb” that scientists plan to test in humans after a successful study involving unborn lambs.

A plastic bag filled with artificial amniotic fluid – the nutrient-rich liquid that sustains a foetus in the womb – allowed foetal lambs to develop at an age equivalent to 23 weeks in humans.

Human infants born at 23 weeks have just a 15 per cent chance of survival, according to pregnancy research charity Tommy’s. This rises to 55 per cent at 24 weeks, while babies born at 25 weeks have an 80 per cent chance of survival.

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This college student spent his summer undercover in a Chinese iPhone factory
Dejian Zeng may have built your phone. Or at least worked on it, anyway. 

The second-year masters of public administration student at NYU Wagner spent six weeks last year working in a Chinese factory manufacturing iPhones for Cupertino-based Apple. Six days a week he  screwed approximately 1,800 screws into 1,800 iPhones. Every day. Over and over again. 

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New computers could delete thoughts without your knowledge, experts warn | The Independent
New human rights laws are required to protect sensitive information in a person’s mind from 'unauthorised collection, storage, use or even deletion'

“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind,” wrote the playwright John Milton in 1634.

But, nearly 400 years later, technological advances in machines that can read our thoughts mean the privacy of our brain is under threat.

Now two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws to ensure people are protected, including “the right to cognitive liberty” and “the right to mental integrity”.

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Kim Jong-Un's army fires rockets at mock enemy warships | Daily Mail Online
North Korea marked military anniversary with the country's 'largest ever' live-fire artillery drills on Tuesday
Kim Jong-Un saluted the army as they fired more than 300 large-calibre artillery pieces along Wonsan coast 
A day later South Korea conducted joint military live-fire drills with the US near the border with North Korea
Donald Trump said Jong-Un isn't as strong as he claims and blamed global community for not reining him in
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mes5464
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Cashless society getting closer, survey finds | Reuters
More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment if they could, and at least 20 percent already pretty much do so, a study showed on Wednesday.

The study, which was conducted in 13 European countries, the United States and Australia, also found that in many places where cash is most used, people are among the keenest to ditch it.

Overall, 34 percent of respondents in Europe and 38 percent in the United States said they would be willing to go cash-free, according to the survey conducted by Ipsos for the ING bank website eZonomics.

Twenty-one percent and 34 percent in Europe and the United States, respectively, said they already rarely use cash.

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New Orleans Prosecutor Sends Witnesses Mock Subpoenas: Report - NBC News
A prosecutor's office in New Orleans is sending notices that are stamped "subpoena" but that are not issued by a judge or court to witnesses in criminal cases, according to a new report.

Legal experts told The Lens NOLA, an investigative news website, that the formal-looking paperwork is unethical and possibly illegal.

A spokesman for Orleans Parish Leon Cannizzaro defended the practice, saying, "It's no different than if we just put a letter out on our letterhead."

But the "subpeona" letters also come with a threat of arrest. "A fine and imprisonment may be imposed for failure to obey this notice," they said.

The Lens said it had confirmed three instances in which the notices were used, including the case of slain former NFL player Will Smith.

"There's no question this is improper," Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman told the site. The DA's spokesman, Chris Bowman, said his boss "does not see any legal issues with respect to this policy."

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Hackers exploited Word flaw for months while Microsoft investigated | Reuters
To understand why it is so difficult to defend computers from even moderately capable hackers, consider the case of the security flaw officially known as CVE-2017-0199.

The bug was unusually dangerous but of a common genre: it was in Microsoft software, could allow a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with little trace, and was fixed April 11 in Microsoft's regular monthly security update.

But it had traveled a rocky, nine-month journey from discovery to resolution, which cyber security experts say is an unusually long time.

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New human rights to protect against 'mind hacking' and brain data theft proposed | Science | The Guardian
New human rights that would protect people from having their thoughts and other brain information stolen, abused or hacked have been proposed by researchers.

The move is a response to the rapid advances being made with technologies that read or alter brain activity and which many expect to bring enormous benefits to people’s lives in the coming years.

Much of the technology has been developed for hospitals to diagnose or treat medical conditions, but some of the tools – such as brainwave monitoring devices that allow people to play video games with their minds, or brain stimulators that claim to boost mental performance – are finding their way into shops.

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ACLU defends Coulter: ‘We must protect speech’ | TheHill
The American Civil Liberties Union defended Ann Coulter Wednesday after the conservative pundit cancelled a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, citing security concerns.

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Portland rose parade canceled after ‘antifascists’ threaten GOP marchers - The Washington Post
For 10 years, the 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association has kicked off the city of Portland’s annual Rose Festival with a family-friendly parade meant to attract crowds to its diverse neighborhood.

Set to march in the parade’s 67th spot this year was the Multnomah County Republican Party, a fact that so outraged two self-described antifascist groups in the deep blue Oregon city that they pledged to protest and disrupt the April 29 event.

Then came an anonymous and ominous email, according to parade organizers, that instructed them to cancel the GOP group’s registration — or else.

“You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely,” the anonymous email said, referring to the violent riots that hit Portland after the 2016 presidential election, reported the Oregonian. “This is nonnegotiable.”

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UC Berkeley Gears Up For Violence Over Coulter Speech Cancellation « CBS San Francisco
BERKELEY (CBS SF) — Following the cancellation of the Ann Coulter speech at University of California, Berkeley, far-right supporters plan to hold a rally Thursday to denounce what they claim is the attempted silencing of their conservative views, stoking fears of another violent encounter with far-left groups.

UC Police said it was preparing for violence Thursday between militant factions on both sides, even as the speech by the conservative firebrand Coulter was canceled over fears of violence.

Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump “Proud Boys,” said he would fly to Berkeley to speak Thursday and was encouraging other alt-right forces to make a large appearance at the gathering, scheduled for 2:00 p.m. at Civic Center Park.

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