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Joel
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Russian foreign minister jokes about Comey firing: "You're kidding"

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mes5464
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The ACLU to travelers: Maybe don’t go to Texas right now
The ACLU is advising travelers to avoid Texas after the state passed SB4, a new law that allows police officers to investigate a person's immigration status during a routine traffic stop. The group says that the law will lead to "widespread racial profiling baseless scrutiny, and illegal arrests of citizens and non-citizens alike." The travel alert applies to both U.S. citizens and those who might be considering a trip to Texas from abroad.

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Putin Says Trump Acted within the law of Firing Comey

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mes5464
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Microsoft CEO: tech sector needs to prevent '1984' future
Seattle (AFP) - Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said Wednesday tech developers have a responsibility to prevent a dystopian "1984" future as the US technology titan unveiled a fresh initiative to bring artificial intelligence into the mainstream.

At the start of its annual Build Conference, Microsoft sought to showcase applications with artificial intelligence that could tap into services in the internet "cloud" and even take advantage of computing power in nearby machines.


Silicon Valley may find a lot to fear in Trump’s FBI director replacement - Recode
U.S. President Donald Trump’s sudden dismissal of FBI director James Comey today has left even the longtime law enforcement official’s critics — from tech companies to civil-liberties advocates — wondering if the new administration may seek to expand the government’s surveillance powers.

From the campaign trail to the Oval Office, Trump has criticized tech giants like Apple that have tried to rebuff federal requests for greater access to their customers’ data and devices. Meanwhile, the president has appointed a number of key individuals to national security posts who want to expand government’s snooping programs.


Emotion reading technology claims to spot criminals before they act 
Emotion reading technology could soon be used by police after a Russian firm created a tool that can identify people in a crowd and tell if they are angry, stressed or nervous. 

The software, created by NTechLab, can monitor citizens for suspicious behaviour by tracking identity, age, gender and current emotional state. It could be used to pre-emptively stop criminals and potential terrorists. 

"The recognition gives a new level of security in the street because in a couple of seconds you can identify terrorists or criminals or killers," said Alexander Kabakov, NTechLab chief executive. 
Last edited by mes5464 on May 10th, 2017, 2:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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AI detective analyses police data to learn how to crack cases | New Scientist
A system called VALCRI should do the laborious parts of a crime analyst's job in seconds, while also suggesting new lines of enquiry and possible motives

MOVE over, Sherlock. UK police are trialling a computer system that can piece together what might have happened at a crime scene. The idea is that the system, called VALCRI, will be able to do the laborious parts of a crime analyst’s job in seconds, freeing them to focus on the case, while also provoking new lines of enquiry and possible narratives that may have been missed.

“Everyone thinks policing is about connecting the dots, but that’s the easy bit,” says William Wong, who leads the project at Middlesex University London. “The hard part is working out which dots need to be connected.”

VALCRI’s main job is to help generate plausible ideas about how, when and why a crime was committed as well as who did it. It scans millions of police records, interviews, pictures, videos and more, to identify connections that it thinks are relevant. All of this is then presented on two large touchscreens for a crime analyst to interact with.

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Black student group at UC Santa Cruz threatens more campus takeovers if additional demands not met - The College Fix
‘There will be more Reclamations’

University of California Santa Cruz administrators recently agreed to meet to all four demands lodged by a black student group who commandeered a campus building and would not leave until their conditions were met.

But in addition to the four initial stipulations, the group made three other demands to the university, and it has warned UC Santa Cruz that it has four months to comply with these demands or “more Reclamations” will result.

After three days of occupation by students of Kerr Hall, Chancellor George Blumenthal agreed to give all black and Caribbean-identified students a 4-year housing guarantee to live in the Rosa Parks African American Themed House; bring back the building’s lounge; paint its exterior the “Pan-Afrikan colors” of red, green and black; and force all new incoming students to go through a mandatory diversity competency training.

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Mexicans Are Upset About Immigrants Committing Crime | The Daily Caller
Residents of a Mexican city are upset about immigrants causing crime, according to a Tuesday report from El Universal.

The report said that there was a press conference held in Tapachula by a leader of a local group called: “For a different Mexico.” The group’s president, Victorino Alvarez Fuentes, said that immigrants were urinating in public and sexually assaulting women and minors.

Tapachula is near the Guatemalan border and besides immigrants from Central American countries, there has been a recent influx of African immigrants entering Mexico seeking to eventually get to the U.S.

The El Universal story centered around a home for immigrants called “Bethlehem,” and said just a couple weeks ago an immigrant staying there was arrested for sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy.

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St. Olaf: Racist note that spurred student protests was 'fabricated' - StarTribune.com
NORTHFIELD, MINN. – A racist threat against a St. Olaf student that touched off campuswide protests and forced the college to cancel classes earlier this month was a hoax, the school revealed Wednesday.

A student confessed to writing the note, St. Olaf President David R. Anderson wrote in a message to students. The threat — an anonymous, typewritten note — was “fabricated,” he said, as an apparent “strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”

“This was not a genuine threat,” Anderson wrote in the first of two messages Wednesday to students. “We’re confident that there is no ongoing threat from this incident to individuals or the community as a whole.”

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US Army training AI using brainwaves of supersnipers | Daily Mail Online
Army researchers are teaching artificial intelligence to learn from humans to become sharper shooters.

At the annual Intelligent User Interface conference, scientists from DCS Corp and the Army Research Lab revealed how training a neural network on datasets of human brain waves can improve its ability to identify a target in a dynamic environment.

The approach teaches AI to spot when a human has made a targeted decision, with hopes that it could one day be used to assess a battlefield scenario in real-time. 

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‘Build that wall’ and other quotes cause NC high school’s yearbook to be confiscated, canceled | Charlotte Observer
ROCKINGHAM, N.C.
All of the yearbooks that had been distributed at the Richmond Early College High School near Rockingham have been taken back by the school after some senior quotes were deemed controversial, the school system says.

Graduating students at the 10-year-old school, which has 259 students, were allowed to share a quote under their picture in the yearbook. After the book was published, officials in the school and district administration found several of the quotes inappropriate, including one credited to President Trump, said district spokeswoman Ashley-Michelle Thublin.

The Trump quote, which said “Build that wall,” has been slammed on social media by some students and others who called it racist and hurtful to classmates, some of whom are minorities. After RECHS announced on its Facebook page that it had discovered the errors and the inappropriate comments, many people voiced their opinions both for and against the decision to cancel the book.

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US signs international declaration on climate change despite Trump's past statements
While President Trump has talked tough in the past about his skeptical views on climate change, his administration appears to be taking a more cautious approach to the issue on the world stage in the early days of his presidency.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed a document today calling climate change a “serious threat” to the Arctic and noting the need for action to reduce its potentially harmful effects.

The document, known as the Fairbanks Declaration, concluded Tillerson's chairing of a meeting of the Arctic Council, a board made up of indigenous groups and the eight countries bordering the Arctic, in Fairbanks, Alaska.

While the council only has the power to issue advisories, the language in the statement signed by Tillerson comes in stark contrast to statements and promises made by President Trump about climate change.

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First autonomous container ship to launch in 2018  | Daily Mail Online
It is set to be the first ship to sail the seas without a single human on board. 

Norway-based Yara has revealed its plans to develop the world’s first all-electric and autonomous container ship that is predicted to remove 747 tons (678 tonnes) of carbon dioxide from the air by reducing diesel-powered truck haulage by 40,000 journeys a year.

Named ‘Yara Birkeland’, the high tech ship is set to sail in 2018 - it will initially be operated as a manned vessel, but the team has noted 2020 as when it will be fully autonomous.

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mes5464
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Does this look real or fake?

This Is the Best Dinosaur Fossil of Its Kind Ever Found
On the afternoon of March 21, 2011, a heavy-equipment operator named Shawn Funk was carving his way through the earth, unaware that he would soon meet a dragon.

That Monday had started like any other at the Millennium Mine, a vast pit some 17 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, operated by energy company Suncor. Hour after hour Funk’s towering excavator gobbled its way down to sands laced with bitumen—the transmogrified remains of marine plants and creatures that lived and died more than 110 million years ago. It was the only ancient life he regularly saw. In 12 years of digging he had stumbled across fossilized wood and the occasional petrified tree stump, but never the remains of an animal—and certainly no dinosaurs.

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mes5464
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In Cashless Sweden, Even God Now Takes Collection Via an App - Bloomberg
In the most cashless society on the planet, even God now accepts digital payments.

A growing number of Swedish parishes have started taking donations via mobile apps. Uppsala’s 13th-century cathedral also accepts credit cards.

The churches’ drive to keep up with the times is the latest sign of Sweden’s rapid shift to a world without notes and coins. Most of the country’s bank branches have stopped handling cash; some shops and museums now only accept plastic; and even Stockholm’s homeless have started accepting cards as payment for their magazine. Go to a flea market, and the seller is more likely to ask to be paid via Sweden’s popular Swish app than with cash.

“Fifteen years ago I would withdraw my entire salary and put it in my wallet, so I knew how much I had left, but these days I never really carry cash,” said Lasse Svard, the acting vicar at the parish of Jarna-Vardinge, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Stockholm.

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Death spiral for cars. By 2030, you probably won’t own one : RenewEconomy
By 2030, you probably won’t own a car, but you may get a free trip with your morning coffee. Transport-As-A-Service will use only electric vehicles and will upend two trillion-dollar industries. It’s the death spiral for cars.

A major new report predicts that by 2030, the overwhelming majority of consumers will no longer own a car – instead they will use on-demand electric autonomous vehicles.

By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs), the report says, 95 per cent of all US passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand, autonomous, electric vehicles that will be owned by fleets rather than individuals.

The provision of this service may come virtually free as part of another offering, or a corporate sponsorship. Imagine, for instance, paying a token sum for a ride into town after buying a latte for $4.50. Or getting a free ride because the local government has decided to make transport easier.

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IRS execs: Our lives at risk in tea party case
Details about tea party bias claims against the IRS could remain secret because current and former agency officials say their lives are in danger if they publicly testify about the case.

Lois Lerner and Holly Paz both have argued in recent court filings that the threat to their lives outweighs the public's right to hear their testimony about how IRS employees in Cincinnati and Washington D.C. handled applications for tax-exempt status from tea party groups.

They recently filed evidence to support their claim under seal in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. Though that evidence has not been made public, court records indicate it relates to death threats and other harassment the women say they endured after their names were connected to the bias claims against the IRS several years ago.

"This documentation, as the court will see, makes very personal references and contains graphic, profane and disturbing language that would lead to unnecessary intrusion and embarrassment if made public," their attorneys argued in a recent court brief. "Public dissemination of their deposition testimony would put their lives in serious jeopardy."

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Human jobs being taken by robots, new study shows | Daily Mail Online
Increased automation and technological advances are taking human jobs 
Changes in consumer culture, such as online holiday booking are costing jobs
Nail technicians, security guards and kitchen staff are being recruited widely 
The survey was a review of 79 million job adverts placed over the past two years

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Violence Against Republicans And Trump Supporters New Normal | The Daily Caller
Violence and intimidation against Republicans are quickly becoming the new normal in an increasingly tense political climate.

In one of the most recent incidents, police in Tennessee charged a woman with felony reckless endangerment on Thursday for allegedly trying to run Republican Congressman David Kustoff off the road after a town hall. The woman, Wendi Wright, was reportedly enraged over Kustoff’s support for the American Health Care Act and screamed at the congressman and his aide, striking his car windows and reaching inside the vehicle.

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Germany Confiscating Homes to Use for Migrants
  • In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.
  • Similar expropriation measures have been proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were deemed unconstitutional.
  • Some Germans are asking what is next: Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per person, and force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?
Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.

City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential property units owned by private citizens.

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.

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‘American Gods’ Just Aired TV’s Most Explicit Gay Sex Scene Ever
American Gods has been called, by various critics, “the most important show on TV,” a show that “couldn’t be more timely,” and, by The Daily Beast’s Melissa Leon, “a celebration of immigrants in the face of Trumpism.”

Adding to those superlatives—and underlining its importance—Sunday night’s episode featured the most graphic gay sex scene there has ever been on TV. And it happened to be between two men who are Muslim.

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Black Harvard students holding a graduation of their own
BOSTON (AP) — Black students at Harvard University are organizing a graduation ceremony of their own this year to recognize the achievements of black students and faculty members some say have been overlooked.

More than 700 students and guests are registered to attend Harvard's first Black Commencement, which will take place two days before the school's traditional graduation events. It isn't meant to replace the existing ceremony, student organizers say, but rather to add something that was missing.

"We really wanted an opportunity to give voice to the voiceless at Harvard," said Michael Huggins, president of the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance, a campus group that is planning the ceremony. "So many students identify with the African diaspora but don't necessarily feel welcome as part of the larger community, and they don't feel like their stories are being shared."

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Oxford University student surgeon who stabbed Tinder boyfriend with bread knife in drink-and-drug rage could avoid jail because of her 'extraordinary talent'
AN Oxford student who knifed her lover in a drug and drink-fuelled frenzy may avoid jail — after a judge hinted she is too clever for prison.

Aspiring heart surgeon Lavinia Woodward, 24, stabbed Thomas Fairclough in the leg with a breadknife and hurled a laptop, glass and jam jar at him.

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No more religious exemptions: Montreal is taxing churches
CTV Montreal
Published Monday, May 15, 2017 8:54PM EDT

Churches in Montreal are becoming concerned about hosting community groups after being hit with bills for municipal taxes.

Joel Coppetiers, the Minister at the Cote des Neiges Presbyterian church, was shocked when his institution first received a municipal tax bill in early 2015.

It was "the first indication that something had changed," said Coppetiers.

Provincial law exempts churches and manses from paying municipal taxes but Coppetiers was told that if a manse is vacant for several months between ministers, it's taxable.

Following that, city officials arrived for an inspection of every room in the church and how they were used.

"The indication is there's not an exemption for the church as a whole, there's only an exemption for those areas used for public worship and things directly related to it," said Coppetiers.

As a result, many churches in Montreal that host community groups, such as food banks, or Girl Guides or Boy Scouts, are facing mounting tax bills.

Coppetiers says the city has changed how it interprets the law.

"We're there to care and serve the community and this is part of it," said Coppetiers.

Coppetiers says taxes are due even when services are suspended for renovations.

The amount owed in taxes can increase swiftly if a church closes its doors.

When Trinity Memorial Church in NDG closed earlier this year, the city started enacting taxes immediately following the last service.

As a result churches feel pressured to sell swiftly, with Trinity Memorial being sold to Stanford Properties Group within two months.

The issue of places of worship owing taxes and fighting the city's exemptions office came as a surprise to city politicians, including Councillor Peter McQueen.

"Already our churches are in danger, they're having a number of financial problems and this is a further low blow," said McQueen.

The NDG councillor said his party, Projet Montreal, will study the exemption issue, but he said Montreal's Executive Committee needs to step up.

"If we don't do something you're going to see churches closed, churches possibly torn down, heaven forbid, certainly converted away from community use," said McQueen.

Meanwhile churches across the island are praying that the city will cease surprising them with taxes they can't afford.
The Montreal Temple is on the south shore of Montreal right off the Transcanada highway. It is a small parcel of land with a chapel, no more than 1-2 acres but the land value in that area is probably some of the most expensive land in Quebec other than right in downtown Montreal. While the church pays for temples and churches through tithing, some other church denominations don't get as consistent donations and could lead them to be unaffordable to operate. It is interesting to note that having the Boy Scouts operate in a church building was a reason for taxing the church. Perhaps this is just another reason for the church to consider fully parting ways with the Scouts.

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