News You Can Use

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Kansas vaccine law fought over religious grounds | The Kansas City Star

The 2-year-old grandson of Linus and Terri Baker has never been vaccinated.

His mother and the Bakers oppose immunization on religious and health grounds.

But now that the boy is in temporary state custody, the Kansas Department for Children and Families intends to vaccinate him despite the family’s wishes.

The Bakers, who have physical custody of the boy as his foster parents, say it’s an unconstitutional overreach and they are now fighting it in federal court.

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Get your food storage. Get prepared.

Without Power Until Next Year, Puerto Ricans Are Leaving—Maybe Forever

When it gets dark, the entire island of Vieques is dark.
This is life on the world-renowned tourist island. And it’s going to be life for at least the next six to eight months, if not longer, before electricity is restored here.

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Dubai as a tech pioneer, from flying taxis to robocops | Daily Mail Online

Star of the GITEX expo, which runs until Thursday, was the flying taxi project
Drone is supported by 18 rotors and equipped with an emergency parachute
Dubai police, which uses robots to direct tourists, presented several innovations
Another futuristic machine presented at GITEX was a hybrid drone-motorcycle, with rotors instead of wheels that allow it to fly

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Nasa may alter the DNA of astronauts who journey to Mars | Daily Mail Online

High energy particles will bombard the bodies of 'Marsonauts' on their voyage
Earth's magnetic field protects people on the planet from most of these particles
DNA drugs could help to treat any damage to cells caused by radiation
More radical genetic alterations could help to boost the body's own resilience

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Americans Face a Rising Risk of Dying Alone - Bloomberg

More older people are living on their own, and fewer have close relatives to help them out as they age.

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China is living the future of mobile pay right now

Mainland Chinese stores and services are increasingly centered around mobile pay apps like WeChat Pay and Alipay.
Chinese mobile payment volume more than doubled to $5 trillion in 2016, according to Analysys data cited by Hillhouse Capital.
Mobile pay is growing so rapidly in mainland China that as a foreigner, I sometimes found it difficult to complete basic transactions without it.
The dominance of mobile transactions lends itself to greater data collection by the Chinese government.

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New California law allows jail time for using wrong gender pronoun, sponsor denies that would happen | Fox News

California health care workers who “willfully and repeatedly” decline to use a senior transgender patient's “preferred name or pronouns” could face punishments ranging from a fine to jail time under a newly signed law. 

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation last week. 

The sponsor, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, has argued adamantly that nobody is going to be criminally prosecuted for using the wrong pronoun. 

“It’s just more scare tactics by people who oppose all LGBT civil rights and protections,” he said in a statement last month. 

But the language seemingly allows for the possibility, however remote. 

The bill itself is aimed at protecting transgender and other LGBT individuals in hospitals, retirement homes and assisted living facilities. The bill would ensure those facilities accommodate transgender people and their needs, including letting them decide which gender-specific bathroom they prefer to use. 

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Environmental groups denounce Trump override of climate plan

HAZARD, Ky. (AP) — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that he will sign a new rule overriding the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

“The war on coal is over,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declared in the coal mining state of Kentucky. He said no federal agency “should ever use its authority” to “declare war on any sector of our economy.”

For Pruitt, getting rid of the Clean Power Plan will mark the culmination of a long fight he began as the elected attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt was among about two-dozen attorney generals who sued to stop President Barack Obama’s 2014 push to limit carbon emissions, stymieing the limits from ever taking effect.

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Tiny houses coming to Charlotte at Keyo Park West development | The State

CHARLOTTE, NC
To developer Kelvin Young, his planned “tiny house” community in northwest Charlotte will create an affordable place for first-time home buyers or for people downsizing.

But to neighbors, Young’s Keyo Park West is a threat to their property values. They are asking City Council to stop it.

“We have been hanging out there for 60 years in Coulwood,” said Robert Wilson, who lives a half-mile from Young’s planned tiny house neighborhood off Cathey Road near Paw Creek Elementary. “All of a sudden this little building started coming up and no one knew what it was. Then it started looking like a house.”

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IMF Says Venezuela's Inflation Rate May Rise Beyond 2,300% in 2018 - Bloomberg

Next year’s price estimate increased from a previous 2,069%
GDP estimates for 2017, 2018 revised down to 12% and 6%

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Hoverbike-riding police to patrol the streets of Dubai from 16 feet above the ground - Mirror Online

The hoverbikes are being manufactured by the Russians and can double up as unmanned drones

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End of the road: will automation put an end to the American trucker? | Technology | The Guardian

Jeff Baxter’s sunflower-yellow Kenworth truck shines as bright and almost as big as the sun. Four men clean the glistening cab in the hangar-like truck wash at Iowa 80, the world’s largest truck stop.

Baxter has made a pitstop at Iowa 80 before picking up a 116ft-long wind turbine blade that he’s driving down to Texas, 900 miles away.

Baxter, 48, is one of the 1.8 million Americans, mainly men, who drive heavy trucks for a living, the single most common job in many US states. Driving is one of the biggest occupations in the world. Another 1.7 million people drive taxis, buses and delivery vehicles in the US alone. But for how long? Having “disrupted” industries including manufacturing, music, journalism and retail, Silicon Valley has its eyes on trucking.


It’s No Use Honking. The Robot at the Wheel Can’t Hear You - Bloomberg

California reports show low-speed crashes with autonomous cars
Automated vehicles programmed to drive cautiously on the road


Skype's Homeland Grapples With Dilemma of Robot as Legal Person - Bloomberg

Estonia, the country which helped create Skype and hosts NATO’s cyber-defense center, is also trying to stay ahead of the pack in regulating robotics.

The Economy Ministry is working on legislation that would address the status of artificial intelligence in legal disputes, said Siim Sikkut, the official in charge of the government’s IT strategy. One proposal under consideration would create the term "robot-agent," which would be somewhere between having a separate legal personality and an object that is someone else’s property.

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Robocops have been deployed in busy city centre in bid to control holiday crowds - Mirror Online

Robocops have been deployed in a busy city centre in a futuristic bid to control huge numbers of holiday crowds.

Police robots are being used for the first time by the authorities in China.

The bizarre looking bobbies have been used to control crowds during the recent public holidays.

But the made-in-China cops are nothing like the metallic bipedal humanoid android seen in the sci-fi film "RoboCop" and instead look like glorified vacuum cleaners.

However, the bots deployed this past week in the Chinese capital of Beijing are not to be underestimated, as they come with state-of-the-art facial recognition software that can sense danger - as well as an extendable electroshock arm.

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I do not believe this.

Fingerprint test that reveals a criminal's lifestyle to be used in court 'in months' | The Independent

New fingerprint technology that can profile a criminal's "lifestyle" could soon be admissible in court.

It's capable of detecting traces of drugs, blood, alcohol, condom lubricants, hair and cleaning products and other substances “of forensic interest”, researchers say, and could help investigators learn much more about a criminal’s activities, just from a fingerprint. 

The technology, which was developed by Sheffield Hallam University researchers, is called Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Mass Spectrometry Imaging and Profiling (MALDI-MSI and MALDI-MSP).

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New York town creates law to punish parents of bullies - NY Daily News

NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Parents of children found bullying other minors could face jail time under a new law approved in a western New York community. The law went into effect Oct. 1 in the Niagara county city of North Tonawanda, just north of Buffalo.

Members of the North Tonawanda Common Council hope the new law will put a stop to bullying by holding parents accountable for their children’s actions.

Parents could be fined $250 and sentenced to 15 days in jail if twice in a 90-day period their child under 18 violates the city’s curfew or any other city law, including bullying.

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APNewsBreak: Billions in Illinois bills not sent for payment

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois is chasing a moving target as it tries to dig out of the nation's worst budget crisis, and a review obtained by The Associated Press shows $7.5 billion worth of unpaid bills — as much as half the total — hadn't been sent to the official who writes the checks by the end of June.

Although many of those IOUs have since been paid, a similar amount in unprocessed bills has replaced them in the last three months, Comptroller Susana Mendoza's office said Monday. That's in addition to $9 billion worth of checks that are at the office but being delayed because the state lacks the money to pay them.

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Commit a crime? Your Fitbit, key fob or pacemaker could snitch on you. - Chicago Tribune

The firefighter found Richard Dabate on the floor of his kitchen, where he had made a desperate 911 call minutes earlier, court records show. Bleeding and lashed to a chair with zip ties, the man moaned a chilling warning: "They're still in the house."

Smoke hung in the air, and a trail of blood led to a darkened basement, as Connecticut State Police swarmed the large home in the Hartford suburbs two days before Christmas in 2015.

Richard, 41, told authorities a masked intruder with a "Vin Diesel" voice killed his wife, Connie, in front of him and tortured him. Police combed the home and town of Ellington but found no suspect.

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Convicted rapist in Michigan awarded joint custody​, victim's...

A judge in Sanilac County has awarded joint legal custody to a man who raped a young girl, the victim's attorney said.

She was just 12 at the time and now has an 8-year-old boy.

The convicted rapist and biological father was not on the child's birth certificate. With joint legal custody, he could have input in decisions regarding the boy's education, religion and medical issues. He could also end up having the right to spend time with the child.

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Why Stanford Researchers Tried to Create a ‘Gaydar’ Machine - The New York Times

Few seemed concerned. So to call attention to the privacy risks, he decided to show that it was possible to use facial recognition analysis to detect something intimate, something “people should have full rights to keep private.”

After considering atheism, he settled on sexual orientation.

Whether he has now created “A.I. gaydar,” and whether that’s even an ethical line of inquiry, has been hotly debated over the past several weeks, ever since a draft of his study was posted online.

Presented with photos of gay men and straight men, a computer program was able to determine which of the two was gay with 81 percent accuracy, according to Dr. Kosinski and co-author Yilun Wang’s paper.

The backlash has been fierce.

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Hacker study: Russia could get into U.S. voting machines - POLITICO

American voting machines are full of foreign-made hardware and software, including from China, and a top group of hackers and national security officials says that means they could have been infiltrated last year and into the future.

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Phoenix parents: Slavery-simulation game unacceptable for schoolkids

Use of an online game that simulates slavery has shocked and upset some Phoenix Elementary School District parents who say the tool trivializes a complex and potentially traumatic issue.

Mission US: Flight to Freedom has students adopt the persona of 14-year-old Lucy King, an enslaved girl trying to escape a Kentucky plantation. Following a choose-your-own-adventure format, students navigate the plantation master's demands and plot a river escape, sometimes receiving beatings.

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Scientists puzzled as Europe is mysteriously showered in radioactive particles… and they think it came from Russia

German scientists say there has been a slight increase in the amount of particles of the isotope Ruthenium-106 in Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France

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Unsent text message passes for will in Australia

Sydney (AFP) - A dead man's unsent text message leaving his home and pension to his brother rather than his wife and son and signed off with a smiley face emoji has been ruled a legitimate will by an Australian court.

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Drone Reportedly Tried To Lure Kids Off Playground « CBS Philly

AKRON, OHIO (CBS) ––  A frightening and bizarre story out of Ohio where a drone reportedly tried to lure kids away from their school playground.

School officials are on alert in Akron after several eyewitnesses claim they heard a voice coming from the drone.

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Call for athletes to be fitted with microchips in fight against drug cheats | Sport | The Guardian

Chief executive of World Olympians Association makes implant suggestion
‘We’re prepared to chip our dogs, so why aren’t we prepared to chip ourselves?’