News You Can Use

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U.S. Navy strike group to move toward Korean peninsula: U.S. official | Reuters

A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program.

Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.

The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

"We feel the increased presence is necessary," the official said, citing North Korea's worrisome behavior.

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Police are filmed dragging man off United Airlines flight | Daily Mail Online

This is the moment a screaming man was knocked out and forcibly dragged off an overbooked United flight by cops while fellow passengers yelled in distress on Sunday night.

Three officers were filmed yanking the man from his seat in Chicago, bashing his head against an arm rest and dragging the seemingly unconscious man down the aisle as he bled from the mouth.

The man - who claimed to be a doctor and said he needed to see patients the next morning - was one of four randomly selected by United to leave the 5.40pm flight from O'Hare to Louisville. 

United had unsuccessfully appealed for volunteers who were willing to give up their seats for $800, stay in a hotel and fly the next day. The passengers had to get off so airline staff could get to Louisville to man a flight the next day.

When the appeal fell on deaf ears they selected four passengers by computer. One couple left the plane at Chicago O'Hare peacefully, but the Asian man who was travelling with his wife refused.  

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Walker wants Wisconsin to be first state to stop dictating how much time kids should go to school - The Washington Post

If Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has his way, the Badger State will become the first to stop requiring students in public schools to spend a minimum number of hours in class.

A proposal in Walker’s new budget plan calls for ending the state’s current minimum requirements — 437 hours for kindergarten, 1,050 hours for elementary schools and 1,137 hours for secondary schools —  and allowing school districts to do what they want in terms of seat hours for students.

Districts and schools would then be judged on their state report cards, which are produced annually by the Department of Public Instruction, based largely on standardized test scores. During a recent visit to a school in Waukesha to talk up his budget proposal, he said: “To me, the report card is the ultimate measure. It’s not how many hours you are sitting in a chair.”

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Russian naval activity in Europe exceeds Cold War levels: U.S. admiral

BERLIN (Reuters) - Recent Russian naval activity in Europe exceeds levels seen during the Cold War, a top U.S. and NATO military officer said, voicing concern that the distributed nature of the deployments could end up "splitting and distracting" the transatlantic alliance.

Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, who heads NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples and commands U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa, said Russia had clearly stepped up its naval actions in recent years although the size of its navy was smaller now than during the Cold War era.

"We're seeing activity that we didn't even see when it was the Soviet Union. It's precedential activity," Howard told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday during a missile defense conference.

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The new age of Ayn Rand: how she won over Trump and Silicon Valley | Books | The Guardian

Her novel The Fountainhead is one of the few works of fiction that Donald Trump likes and she has long been the darling of the US right. But only now do her devotees hold sway around the world

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Trump orders military advisers to prepare plans to hit North Korea - Mirror Online

President Trump has ordered his military advisers to be ready with a list of options to smash North Korea’s nuclear threat.

One of the advisers, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, confirmed his Commander-in-Chief has made the order as a U.S. carrier strike group heads for the region.

It is believed that among the options are combined special forces raids and pre-emptive missile strikes.

One of the problems facing an American-led operation to hit Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong-Un is the intricate tunnel network under the capital.

China 'deploys 150,000 troops to North Korea border' | Daily Mail Online

Trump's Syria strike Friday was widely interpreted as a warning to North Korea 
China, which was left shocked by the air strikes, has deployed medical and backup units from the People's Liberation Army forces to the Yalu River 
The troops have been dispatched to prepare for pre-emptive attacks by the US
The US Navy has moved the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group from Singapore to North Korea after the country conducted more missile testing

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Top Dems Call For Anti-War Congresswoman To Be Ousted | The Daily Caller

Top Democrats are not pleased that Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pushed the U.S. to collect and release evidence from the scene of the chemical attack in Syria.

Gabbard visited Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad in January and has been consistently cautious about American involvement in the Middle Eastern county. The Hawaii congresswoman said in a statement that the airstrikes on Syria were “short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaida and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.”

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Donald Trump warns North Korea is 'looking for trouble' and says US 'will solve problem with or without China' - Mirror Online

Donald Trump has warned North Korea is "looking for trouble" after the country declared it was "ready for war".

The US President ramped up his war of words with the secretive state via Twitter as America woke up this morning.

North Korea was angered when a US Navy strike group, including the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, diverted towards the Korean peninsula amid high tension.

A government statement to North Korea's state-controlled news agency overnight said: "This goes to prove that the US reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase.

"The DPRK is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the US."

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Can Democrats cuss their way back to the White House? | McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON
An old political maxim holds that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose.

But after voters rewarded Donald Trump despite – or perhaps because of – his plain, often expletive-prone rhetoric, Democrats are suddenly quite eager to adopt the language of America’s president.

From the party’s new chairman to a senator many believe will run for the White House in 2020, Democrats are letting loose four-letter words in public speeches and interviews, causing a small stir, at least in political circles, where swearing in public is usually off limits.

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Chinese firm halves worker costs by hiring army of robots to sort out 200,000 packages a day | South China Morning Post

A viral video showing an army of little orange robots sorting out packages in a warehouse in eastern China is the latest example of how machines are increasingly taking over menial factory work on the mainland.
The behind-the-scenes footage of the self-charging robot army in a sorting centre of Chinese delivery powerhouse Shentong (STO) Express was shared on People’s Daily’s social media accounts on Sunday.
The video showed dozens of round orange Hikvision robots – each the size of a seat cushion – swivelling across the floor of the large warehouse in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

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That Fingerprint Sensor on Your Phone Is Not as Safe as You Think - The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Fingerprint sensors have turned modern smartphones into miracles of convenience. A touch of a finger unlocks the phone — no password required. With services like Apple Pay or Android Pay, a fingerprint can buy a bag of groceries, a new laptop or even a $1 million vintage Aston Martin. And pressing a finger inside a banking app allows the user to pay bills or transfer thousands of dollars.

While such wizardry is convenient, it has also left a gaping security hole.

New findings published Monday by researchers at New York University and Michigan State University suggest that smartphones can easily be fooled by fake fingerprints digitally composed of many common features found in human prints. In computer simulations, the researchers from the universities were able to develop a set of artificial “MasterPrints” that could match real prints similar to those used by phones as much as 65 percent of the time.

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U.S. Navy funds development robot surveillance system designed to spy on humans in terrifying detail

Research chiefs want to harness the power of machines to build a snooping network that's a 'single entity with many eyes'

THE U.S. Navy is funding the development of a new super-surveillance system which uses robots to snoop on humans in terrifying detail.

It has handed a $1.7 million (£1.4 million) grant to researchers from Cornell University, who are working to build a system which can “conduct surveillance as a single entity with many eyes”.

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North Korea state media warns of nuclear strike if provoked as U.S. warships approach

PYONGYANG, April 11 (Reuters) - North Korean state media on Tuesday warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of U.S. aggression as a U.S. Navy strike group steamed towards the western Pacific.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has urged China to do more to rein in its impoverished neighbour, said in a Tweet North Korea was "looking for trouble" and the United States would "solve the problem" with or without China's help.

Tension has escalated sharply on the Korean peninsula with talk of military action by the United States gaining traction following its strikes last week against Syria and amid concerns the reclusive North may soon conduct a sixth nuclear test.

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Harvard Researchers Are Preparing to Geoengineer the Atmosphere - Seeker

In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists will disperse aerosols into the stratosphere in initial tests of a controversial technique for blocking incoming solar radiation.

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Humanity is already losing control of artificial intelligence and it could spell disaster for our species

Researchers highlight the 'dark side' of AI and question whether humanity can ever truly understand its most advanced creations

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Evangelicals are leaving their churches over Donald Trump

President Donald Trump might be the most divisive politician in history, but for many, politics is left behind when sitting in the pews. For others, bringing politics to the altar is driving them away.

A survey from The Washington Post interviewed evangelicals before the 2016 election and after. Over one in ten left their church by mid-November and about 15 percent of church-going Americans who think politics has become too divisive left their church as well.

Two groups ultimately ended up leaving their churches: Those who liked Trump while the pastor did not and those who didn’t like Trump but felt their pastor did. The no-win situation might be one of the reasons that pastors stopped talking about politics after November.

This isn’t the first election where evangelicals played a role in politics. In 2004, President George W. Bush’s senior advisor Karl Rove worked with religious leaders to ensure 10 million evangelicals came to the polls to support Bush.

The Post cited a forthcoming article that outlines two decades of data gathered about what happens to parishioners when they disagree with their church. However, Pew data also reveals that progressive and moderate evangelicals have been fleeing from churches for decades as their churches were taken over by the right-wing.

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Alabama Senate votes to allow church to form police dept. - WBRC FOX6 News - Birmingham, AL

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The Alabama Senate has voted to allow a church to form its own police force.

Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a law enforcement department.

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When Robots Take to City Sidewalks - WSJ

SAN FRANCISCO—On a sunny day here in the residential Potrero Hill neighborhood, a 3-foot-tall robot named Scrappy went out for a stroll.

Box-shaped, mounted on four rubber wheels and outfitted with a high-tech array of sensors and cameras, Scrappy is part of a team of robots surveying the sidewalk landscape for Marble, a robotics startup here. For now, the robots are taking their walks with Marble executives or employees. Within a year, the company aims to have the majority of San Francisco’s sidewalks three-dimensionally mapped—allowing its small fleet to autonomously navigate the city, carrying everything from groceries to takeout, dry-cleaning and prescriptions to and from homes and businesses.

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Cuts?! Eliminate them.

White House calls for deep agency cuts - POLITICO

The White House on Wednesday will direct federal agencies to make deep personnel cuts over the next year, according to the White House budget chief and documents provided to POLITICO.

Agency heads will receive a 14-page memorandum outlining changes. The memo, which replaces the federal hiring ban Trump enacted in January, outlines cuts based on Trump’s "skinny" budget, released last month. The budget proposal called for deep cuts to domestic programs and an increase in military spending.

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Foreign journalists in North Korea told to prepare for 'big' event

SEOUL (Reuters) - Foreign journalists visiting North Korea have been told to prepare for a "big and important event" on Thursday, although there were no indications it was directly linked to tensions in the region over the isolated state's nuclear weapons program.

Around 200 foreign journalists are in Pyongyang as the country marks the 105th birth anniversary of its founding president Kim Il Sung on April 15, North Korea's biggest national day called "Day of the Sun".

Officials gave no details as to the nature of the event or where it would take place, and similar announcements in the past have been linked to relatively low-key set pieces.

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‘White Privilege Checklist' appears in Minnesota dorm

A display in a University of Minnesota residence hall provides an 11-point “checklist” to help students identify their “white privilege.”
Even a self-described "social progressive" student believes the board "crosses the line," calling it "a one-sided affair" that offers no opportunity for productive dialogue.

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Congressman tells angry constituents the idea that they pay his salary is ‘bullcrap’ | Charlotte Observer

An Oklahoman congressman is under fire after he seemingly dismissed the notion that his constituents pay for him to go to Congress, calling the idea “bullcrap” in a viral video making the rounds on social media.

Markwayne Mullin, speaking at a town hall Tuesday in Jay, Oklahoma, was responding to a question from the audience when he responded to a claim that constituents pay for him to work in Congress.

“You say you pay for me to do this. Bullcrap. I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got there and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go,” said the 39-year-old Republican who represents Oklahoma’s second district, which covers much of the eastern part of the state.

When several audience members pushed back against this claim, Mullin went on, “I’m just saying this is a service for me, not a career, and I thank God this is not how I make my living.”

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Brazil’s political class is in crisis as over 100 are investigated for corruption - The Washington Post

BRASILIA — Brazil’s Supreme Court has authorized an investigation of over 100 top politicians, implicating an entire swath of the country’s governing elite in a corruption probe that has tarnished the political system and threatened to derail the nation’s economic recovery.

Nearly a third of the president’s cabinet, the heads of both chambers of Congress, two dozen senators and 42 representatives will be investigated for corruption, money laundering and fraud, according to a list released late Tuesday by a Supreme Court justice presiding over the cases. Five former presidents were also implicated. The list was the subject of rumors and leaks for weeks and sent shock waves through the capital when it was made public.

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Prison inmates build computers and hid them in ceiling - CNN.com

(CNN)Lax security allowed inmates at an Ohio prison to build two computers and connect them to the state's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's network, investigators found.

The computers were found hidden in the ceiling of the prison in Marion County in 2015, prompting an investigation by Ohio's Inspector General.

The computers contained applications for credit cards using another inmate's information, pornography, research on tax refund fraud, recipes for homemade drugs and message exchanges.

The Marion Correctional Institution inmates were also able to issue passes to gain access to multiple areas within the prison.

IT employees had received an alert about a computer using ODRC's computer network that "had exceeded a daily internet usage threshold." The alert also pointed out that the computers were being used with a former employee and prison contractor's stolen credentials.