News You Can Use

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POTUS Trump RIPS Obama - Scouts Chant "We Love Trump!" at National Jamboree (VIDEO)

The scouts chanted “We Love Trump!” tonight at the National Jamboree in West Virginia.

The massive crowd of tens of thousands of boy scouts cheered the president at the jamboree.
The crowd was enormous – nearly 40,000 people!

Trump ripped Barack Obama for NEVER attending a jamboree.
The massive crowd grumbled then started chanting—

“We love Trump! We love Trump!… “

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New U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sets sail with no urinals - NY Daily News

The U.S. Navy has decided on a new form of berth control.

The USS Gerald R. Ford — the newest U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and the first in its class of ships — is ditching urinals, introducing “gender neutral” bathrooms.

Each sleeping quarter — what the Navy calls a berthing area — will have traditional porcelain bowls in the heads (or bathrooms) of the newly designed aircraft carrier, which can hold over 5,000 sailors.

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Robots could 'threaten humanity' and will be physically stronger than humans "in the next few years", warns scientist - Mirror Online

Robots could 'threaten our existence' and even become physically stronger than humans "in the next few years", according to new documentary.

Experts claim robots could even be classed as an "invasive species" due to the fact they are evolving at such a rapid rate.

And according to a new BBC science documentary into their evolution, technology is advancing to the point of allowing robots to consciously make decisions.

Science experts appearing on the show, Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots, claim this poses a far greater threat to humanity than that depicted in movies such as The Terminator.

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Federal spending is skyrocketing — along with US debt | New York Post

Federal spending topped $400 billion for the first time in June.

That has the unfortunate distinction of beating the record of $392.8 billion that was spent in March of 2017.

I mention this because the US debt is getting awfully close to $20 trillion — a level which, as I said in a column a while ago, the media should give as much attention as it does whenever the Dow Jones industrial average passes through milestones.

Except, of course, the US debt level is more of a millstone around the country’s neck than a milestone.

As of Monday afternoon, the US National Debt Clock is less than $34 billion shy of $20 trillion.

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Rand Paul: Conservatives are getting 'squat' from Senate leadership | TheHill

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said early Tuesday that "conservatives are getting squat" from GOP leaders in negotiations to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.

"There's no promise of a clean repeal vote," he said on "Fox & Friends. "If they're not even going to talk with conservatives, if we're going to be excluded from the process, conservatives don't need to participate in this pork fest."

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Trump: no transgender people will serve in U.S. military - Twitter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military in any capacity.

"After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military," Trump wrote in a series of Twitter posts.

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," the Republican president wrote.

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Scientists dim sunlight, suck up carbon dioxide to cool ...

Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at Oxford University, said solar geo-engineering projects seemed "barking mad".

By contrast, he said "carbon dioxide removal is challenging technologically, but deserves investment and trial."

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Scientists build DNA from scratch to alter life's blueprint

At Jef Boeke's lab, you can whiff an odor that seems out of place, as if they were baking bread here.
But he and his colleagues are cooking up something else altogether: yeast that works with chunks of man-made DNA.
Scientists have long been able to make specific changes in the DNA code. Now, they're taking the more radical step of starting over, and building redesigned life forms from scratch. Boeke, a researcher at New York University, directs an international team of 11 labs on four continents working to "rewrite" the yeast genome, following a detailed plan they published in March.
Their work is part of a bold and controversial pursuit aimed at creating custom-made DNA codes to be inserted into living cells to change how they function, or even provide a treatment for diseases. It could also someday help give scientists the profound and unsettling ability to create entirely new organisms.

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Davis Islamic Center Under Fire After Online Sermon Translation « CBS Sacramento

DAVIS (CBS13) — The Islamic Center of Davis is under fire after a translation of a sermon posted online said it called for the annihilation of Jews.

The Davis Imam’s two-hour long sermon is mostly in Arabic. According to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute, Ammar Shahin calls for the annihilation of Jews, and asks his higher power to liberate the Al Asqa mosque from their filth.

He’s referring to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where tensions are high after the Israeli government installed metal detectors when a terrorist shot and killed two Israeli soldiers earlier this month. In English, the Imam is clear- praying for a day of judgment between Muslims and Jews.

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Republicans Toy with a Misguided Tax on the First Amendment | LifeZette

President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have laudably made passing tax reform — real tax reform, not just shuffling money from one group to another — a top priority. Now, however, some supply-side economics skeptics are open to the possibility of taxing free speech — a constitutional right — to fill Washington’s coffers.

As you read this, the “Big Six” are meeting to discuss which deductions to keep or eliminate, and Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady must quell these whispers of taxing advertising. Imposing such a levy would trample on our country’s liberty and values, setting a dangerous precedent for further constitutional breaches in the foreseeable future.

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More than a third of California households have virtually no savings, are at risk of financial ruin, report says

More than 37 percent of California households have so little cash saved that they couldn’t live at the poverty level for even three months if they lost a job or suffered another significant loss of income.

That’s the grim assessment of the 2017 Prosperity Now Scorecard. The report was compiled by Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C.-based organization seeking to help people — particularly people of color and those with limited income — achieve financial security and prosperity.

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Newly declassified memos detail extent of improper Obama-era NSA spying | TheHill

The National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama years by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies’ ability to obey their own rules.

The memos reviewed by The Hill were publicly released on July 11 through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union.

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New diesel and petrol cars banned from UK roads by 2040, as Government unveils new pollution tax on drivers in busiest areas

Diesel drivers on congested roads in towns and cities across the UK face new pollution taxes under Government plans which will ultimately herald the end of the traditional car.

Ministers have identified 81 major roads in 17 towns and cities where urgent action is required because they are in breach of EU emissions standards, putting people's health at risk.

The Government will also commit to banning the sale of all new diesel and petrol cars by 2040 in a bid to encourage people to switch to electric and hybrid vehicles.

The air quality strategy urges local authorities to first try to reduce emissions by retrofitting the most polluting diesel vehicles, changing road layouts and removing speed humps.

However it concedes that as a last resort councils will be allowed to impose tough restrictions on the most polluting diesel vehicles as soon as 2020 to bring down the levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide emissions.

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California Muslim Just Went On TV To Say It’s Time To Start Annihilating Americans – BIG Mistake

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African-American women are increasingly buying guns, statistics show – Women in the World in Association with The New York Times – WITW

Up to 59 percent of African-American households now view owning a gun as a “necessity,” according to a recent study from the Pew Research Center released this month, and African-American women have outpaced all other races and genders in terms of securing concealed carry permits in Texas between 2000 and 2016, according to demographic information released by the state. It wasn’t always this way — as recently as 2012, Pew had found that less than a third of black families saw gun ownership as a positive. Philip Smith, the founder of the National African American Gun Association, says that politics — and police shootings such as the recent slaying of Philando Castile — have caused the sudden upswing in gun ownership. And, in his opinion, owning a gun is perhaps the only way that African-American men and women can truly protect themselves.

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Chaos Erupts At City Hall At Committee Hearing For Proposed Gun Bill « CBS Baltimore

After all of Tuesday’s events, council members voted through the amended gun bill by a 5-2 vote, moving it to the next round.

In a matter of minutes, rising tensions overflowed, police moved in and people pushed back, which ended with two arrests and a lot of upset people.

Police were called to move in as activists clashed with council members inside a meeting on a controversial gun bill. Council members had issued several warnings before officers started removing people.

But before the gavel dropped on any kind of decision, the cuffs came out. People were pushed to the floor and into walls.

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Meet Tally: The Grocery Stocking Robot About To Eradicate 1,000's Of Minimum Wage Jobs | Zero Hedge

But, as we pointed out back in May, well before Amazon's decision to buy Whole Foods, Amazon's success in penetrating the traditional grocery market was always a matter of when, not if.  Concept stores, like Amazon Go, already exist that virtually eliminate the need for dozens of in-store employees which will allow them to generate higher returns at lower price points than traditional grocers.  And, with grocery margins averaging around 1-2% at best, if Amazon, or anyone for that matter, can truly create smart stores with no check outs and cut employees in half they can effectively destroy the traditional supermarket business model.

And while the demise of the traditional grocery store will undoubtedly take time (recall that people were calling for the demise of Blockbuster for nearly a decade before it finally happened), make no mistake that the retail grocery market 10-15 years from now will not look anything like the stores you visit today.

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Pakistani council orders "revenge rape" of 16-year-old girl

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani police have arrested 25 members of an informal village council accused of ordering the rape of a 16-year-old girl as revenge for her brother's alleged sexual assault of another girl.

The Supreme Court also requested a report on the case, which echoed a notorious case from 2002 in which another teenager was gang-raped on a local council's order.

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Muslim gang rampaged through Liverpool attacking strangers because they were white “non-Muslims” - Liverpool Echo

A gang of Muslim men rampaged through Liverpool city centre attacking strangers because they were white “non-Muslims”.

One witness feared Amin Mohmed, Mohammed Patel and Faruq Patel were ISIS terrorists.

The drunken yobs targeted three unknown men before Mohmed, 24, and Mohammed, 20, set upon Gary Bohanna when he revealed he was Christian.

Laughing Faruq, 19, who was not convicted of a racial or religious motive, then filmed Mohmed punching St Helens councillor Paul Lynch to the ground, as his terrified girlfriend tried to protect him.

Liverpool Crown Court heard counter-terrorism officers raided the three men’s homes in Bolton after the shocking incident on March 20 last year.

The judge, Recorder Louise Brandon, said: “This was a disgraceful and sustained campaign of violence carried out on the streets of this city.”

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Democrats say they're ready for a culture war - CNNPolitics.com

(CNN)This week, Democrats unveiled an agenda for the midterms that carefully avoided any mention of the issues that had led to accusations they'd been playing "identity politics" in recent elections. Their message, party leaders said, would be all economics, all the time.

But President Donald Trump is -- and has always been -- a culture warrior.
And he made an aggressive move to elevate those issues to the political forefront Wednesday by announcing via Twitter that he is banning transgender Americans from serving in the military.
It is reminiscent of George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove's efforts to push a same-sex marriage ban in 2004. Gregory T. Angelo, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said Trump's move "smacks of politics, pure and simple."

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Rule that patients must finish antibiotics course is wrong, study says | Society | The Guardian

Telling patients to stop taking antibiotics when they feel better may be preferable to instructing them to finish the course, according to a group of experts who argue that the rule long embedded in the minds of doctors and the public is wrong and should be overturned.

Patients have traditionally been told that they must complete courses of antibiotics, the theory being that taking too few tablets will allow the bacteria causing their disease to mutate and become resistant to the drug.

But Martin Llewelyn, a professor in infectious diseases at Brighton and Sussex medical school, and colleagues claim that this is not the case. In an analysis in the British Medical Journal, the experts say “the idea that stopping antibiotic treatment early encourages antibiotic resistance is not supported by evidence, while taking antibiotics for longer than necessary increases the risk of resistance”.

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First Human Embryos Edited in U.S. - MIT Technology Review

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon, MIT Technology Review has learned.

The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR, according to people familiar with the scientific results.

Until now, American scientists have watched with a combination of awe, envy, and some alarm as scientists elsewhere were first to explore the controversial practice. To date, three previous reports of editing human embryos were all published by scientists in China.

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Google's DeepMind creates an AI with 'imagination' | WIRED UK

Google's DeepMind is developing an AI capable of 'imagination', enabling machines to see the consequences of their actions before they make them.

In two new research papers, the British AI firm, which was acquired by Google in 2014, describes new developments for "imagination-based planning" to AI.

Its attempt to create algorithms that simulate the distinctly human ability to construct a plan could eventually help to produce software and hardware capable of solving complex tasks more efficiently.

DeepMind's previous research in this area has been incredibly successful, with its AlphaGo AI managing to beat a series of human champions at the notoriously tricky board game Go. However, AlphaGo relies on a clearly defined set of rules to provide likely outcomes, with relatively few factors to consider.

"The real world is complex, rules are not so clearly defined and unpredictable problems often arise," explain the DeepMind researchers in a blog post. "Even for the most intelligent agents, imagining in these complex environments is a long and costly process."

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CIA Gives More Power to Spies to Bolster Intelligence Operations

The Central Intelligence Agency under President Trump is giving more authority to field operatives and cutting excessive bureaucracy in a bid to boost intelligence operations, CIA Director Mike Pompeo says.

In his first news interview since taking charge of the agency in January, Pompeo also said he believes America's greatest long-term security challenge is the threat posed by China, not Russia. Excerpts of the interview can be found here.