The Seattle Times
Rare brain-eating amoebas killed Seattle woman who rinsed her sinuses with tap water. Doctor warns this could happen again
When a 69-year-old Seattle woman underwent brain surgery earlier this year at Swedish Medical Center, her doctors were stumped.
Last January, the woman was admitted to the hospital’s emergency department after suffering a seizure. Doctors took a CT scan of her brain to determine the cause, finding what they initially thought was a tumor. But an examination of tissue taken from her brain during surgery a day later showed she was up against a much deadlier attack, one that had been underway for about a year and was literally eating her alive.
“When I operated on this lady, a section of her brain about the size of a golf ball was bloody mush,” Dr. Charles Cobbs, neurosurgeon at Swedish, said in a phone interview. “There were these amoeba all over the place just eating brain cells. We didn’t have any clue what was going on, but when we got the actual tissue we could see it was the amoeba.”
The woman died a month later from the rare organisms that entered her brain after being injected into her nasal cavity by way of a neti pot, a teapot-shaped product used to rinse out the sinuses and nasal cavity, according to a case study recently published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Global warming today mirrors conditions during Earth’s largest extinction event: UW study
More than two-thirds of life on earth died off some 252 million years ago, in the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history.
Researchers have long suspected that volcanic eruptions triggered “the Great Dying,” as the end of the Permian geologic period is sometimes called, but exactly how so many creatures died has been something of a mystery.
Now scientists at the University of Washington and Stanford believe their models reveal how so many animals were killed, and they see frightening parallels in the path our planet is on today.
Models of the effects of volcanic greenhouse-gas releases showed the earth warming dramatically and oxygen disappearing from its oceans, leaving many marine animals unable to breathe, according to a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science. By the time temperatures peaked, about 80 percent of the oceans’ oxygen, on average, had been depleted. Most marine animals went extinct.
The Oregonian
‘We have to act,' Oregon sends I-5, 205 toll plan to feds
Oregon approved a plan Thursday to toll sections of Interstate 5 and 205 in the Portland area.
The move is the culmination of more than a year of study kickstarted by the 2017 statewide transportation bill signed by Gov. Kate Brown. Oregon’s application to federal officials proposes charging drivers on the increasingly congested interstates as a way to raise revenue for road projects and manage traffic.
Oregon’s Transportation Commission, the state’s top decision-making body, unanimously signed off on the proposal Thursday. The application now heads to the Federal Highway Administration for consideration. Oregon hopes to hear from highway officials early in 2019 and potentially hire a consultant in April to start working in more detail on the issue.
The Los Angeles Times
The arrest of a top Huawei executive is 'a shot into the heart' of China's tech ambitions, analysts say
The arrest of a top executive at one of the most successful Chinese global companies threatens to upend a delicate detente between the U.S. and China in their months-long trade war.
Meng Wanzhou, deputy chairwoman and chief financial officer of telecommunications giant Huawei, was arrested Saturday during a transit stop at a Vancouver airport and could face possible extradition to the U.S. and an appearance in federal court in New York.
A U.S. law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case by name, said the action against Meng involves violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Another U.S. official described the violations as serious. Neither official provided specifics.
Increasingly frustrated, Ecuador says it's time for Julian Assange to finally leave embassy
Ecuador's president said Thursday that the British government has given written assurances that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not be extradited to face the death penalty abroad if he leaves his London embassy hideout, where he’s been holed up for more than six years.
In the clearest sign yet that the Australian activist might eventually face the U.S. justice system, President Lenin Moreno said he was eager to bring an end to Assange’s long residency inside his country’s embassy and had been working with British authorities to make that happen.
“I am not happy with Assange’s presence in the Ecuadorean Embassy.… It seems to us six years is too much,” Moreno said in a radio interview from the presidential palace in Quito, the nation’s capital.
Paradise evacuees return to charred homes almost one month after deadly Camp fire
Vicki Taylor wiped her tears with ash-covered hands, leaving a trail of black soot on her face. […]
It was the first time in a nearly a month that residents were able to return to properties on the eastern side of town. A large portion of the town still remains under evacuation orders. In the nearby town of Concow, roughly 500 residents were given permission to return earlier in the week.
Traffic into Paradise was moving slowly Wednesday. Before residents entered town, they were given gloves, breathing masks and white body suits so that they could safely look through debris.
The Daily Progress
Fields case now in jurors’ hands
A jury must now decide whether James Fields Jr. acted with malice when he drove into a crowd of counter-protesters on Aug. 12, 2017, or whether he acted out self-defense.
Thursday’s closing arguments in Charlottesville Circuit Court focused on Fields’ mindset when he drove into the crowd, killing 32 year-old Heather Heyer, severely wounding eight people and injuring more than 20 others. His attorney, Denise Lunsford, asked the jurors to convict him of “no more” than involuntary manslaughter in Heyer’s death.
As displayed in the opening statements, neither the prosecution nor the defense disputes that Fields was driving the gray Dodge Challenger that slammed into the crowd, capping off the chaotic and violent white supremacist Unite the Right rally.
Much of the closing arguments focused on Fields’ intent and used a meme he posted publicly on Instagram in May 2017 that showed a car plowing into a group of protesters.
The Denver Post
Climate change clobbers Colorado and the West, unfurling fire, drought, insects and heat
Fires burn more frequently and uncontrollably, ravaging the West’s pines, firs and spruces, destroying lives and buildings.
Multiplying insects feast: Colorado’s forester last week said the state over two decades has lost a fifth of its forests to bugs, and a recent survey estimated one in 14 standing trees is dead.
Shrinking Rocky Mountain snowpack is forcing farmers out of business, jeopardizing skiing, and compelling utilities to consider super-costly new sources of water, including recycled waste.
And rising heat waves hurt people — especially children, the elderly, low-income outdoor workers and anybody who can’t afford air conditioning.
Star Tribune
Minnesota projects $1.5 billion surplus
Minnesota’s economy is humming and is expected to generate a $1.54 billion state budget surplus, providing a financial launchpad for incoming Gov. Tim Walz.
The state’s economic forecast Thursday puts Walz, a Democrat, in a strong position to start working on some of his campaign vows, including boosting educational spending, expanding publicly funded health care and new money for transportation.
This is the final projection of state revenue and expenditures during DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s time in office. Thursday’s surplus starkly contrasted with the $6.2 billion budget deficit Dayton faced when he took office in Jan. 2011.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
New election data highlights the ongoing impact of 2011 GOP redistricting in Wisconsin
Detailed election data posted by the state this week illustrates once more the ongoing impact of Wisconsin’s gerrymandered, Republican-friendly legislative map…
Republicans enjoy a built-in 64-35 advantage in the partisan makeup of the 99 Assembly districts. In a hypothetical 50-50 election, in which there are equal numbers of Democratic and Republican voters in Wisconsin, no one crosses party lines and independents split down the middle, that translates into a massive 29-seat GOP advantage in the Assembly. That's very close to the 27-seat margin (63-36) that Republicans won last month.
Lame-duck session: Early voting limits sow confusion in advance of February election
Wednesday's move by lawmakers to rein in early voting in Wisconsin will disenfranchise voters and create confusion for election officials already awaiting a court ruling on the issue as they head into a February primary, election officials and observers said.
"This will create an unnecessary hardship for a lot of voters. And I don't think creating unnecessary hardship is consistent with democracy," said Neil Albrecht, executive director of the Election Commission for the City of Milwaukee, where almost 10 percent of voters cast in-person absentee ballots in November's midterm elections.
Erin Grunze, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said the move is inconsistent with its position that elections should be "free, fair and accessible to all."
Miami Herald
Peña Nieto leaves office as 1st Mexican leader in decades not to get a U.S. state visit
Standing in front of both nations’ flags, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto stood shoulder-to-shoulder with... Donald Trump, smiling for the cameras and shaking hands before sitting down to sign a new North American trade agreement.
But the visit wasn’t in the East Room of the White House. Peña Nieto didn’t get Trump to himself. (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was there.) And it wasn’t an official state visit.
In fact, Peña Nieto is the first Mexican president in more than half a century not to be honored with a state visit to the United States - reflecting how far relations have fallen between the United States and America’s most important bilateral partner.
Lawmakers issue call for investigation of serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal
More than two dozen lawmakers are demanding an investigation into possible misconduct by U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, who, as a former federal prosecutor in Miami, helped broker a secret plea deal for a multimillionaire accused of running an underage sex trafficking network.
The lawmakers, mostly Democrats, have sent several letters to Michael E. Horowitz, inspector general for the Department of Justice, calling for a probe into Acosta’s role in the 2008 plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein, 65, a Palm Beach hedge fund manager, faced a possible life sentence for molesting dozens of girls, but was instead granted federal immunity as part of a non-prosecution agreement approved by Acosta when he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
The News & Observer
‘An innocent victim’: Amid election fraud claims, NC GOP defends Mark Harris
The executive director of North Carolina’s Republican Party on Thursday defended GOP candidate Mark Harris as an “innocent victim” and downplayed a report that incumbent Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger’s campaign alerted the party to voting irregularities in Harris’ primary upset in May.
In the primary in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, Harris received 437 mail-in absentee votes in Bladen County to Pittenger’s 17, according to state board of election records. Harris won the race — a rematch of his narrow 2016 loss — by 828 votes.
Pittenger recognized something right away as results came in on Election Night, mentioning a “ballot stuffer,” according to one person in the room that night. The Washington Post reportedThursday that several Pittenger aides contacted NCGOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse and someone from the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The Washington Post
Trump to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as the next U.N. ambassador
Trump plans to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said Thursday.
Nauert, a foreign policy novice, joined the State Department last year after a career as an anchor and correspondent at Fox News. She would replace Nikki Haley, who also took the position without significant foreign policy experience, but won election twice as governor of South Carolina.
A former news reporter for ABC, Nauert joined Fox in 1996, originally as a correspondent and later as a co-host for Fox and Friends. Trump is one of the show’s biggest fans, and he often finds inspiration in the hosts’ remarks as topics for his morning tweets.
Black Sea standoff reflects Russia’s disregard for global rules, top U.S. military officer says
Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian naval vessels is a manifestation of its disregard for global rules and intent to test the West, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Trump administration was not discussing a military response to the Nov. 25 incident in the Kerch Strait, in which Russia’s coast guard seized three Ukrainian ships that Moscow said had veered into its territorial waters.
“It says a lot about Russia’s respect of international norms and standards,” Dunford said during a Washington Post Live event. “What took place in the Sea of Azov is consistent with a pattern of behavior that really goes back to Georgia, the Crimea and the Donbass in the Ukraine,” he said, referring to Russia’s steps to assert itself beyond its borders over the past decade.
Billionaire GOP donor gave Scott Pruitt $50,000 for legal expenses
Scott Pruitt, who resigned this summer as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency amid a flurry of ethics inquiries, received $50,000 for his legal defense fund from a Wisconsin billionaire, according to a financial disclosure released Thursday.
The contribution came this year from Diane Hendricks, a businesswoman and major Republican donor, though it was not clear precisely when she donated to the “Scott Pruitt Legal Expenses Trust.” It also did not specify whether he had spent the money, or how.
In the financial disclosure form, which Pruitt was required to file upon leaving the agency, EPA officials made clear that he had not sought ethics advice before accepting the donation to offset his legal expenses. The disclosure covers this calendar year, through Pruitt’s resignation in early July.
Bloomberg
Biggest Worry for Traders? They Don't Know Why Stocks Are Moving
It would be nice to write the market’s convulsions off to liquidity failures, or tariffs, the Federal Reserve or tech valuations.
But for the people living through these swings on trading desks, none of those explanations does the trick -- and that’s what really worries them.
Markets have grown so jittery that moves seem detached from the fundamental or technical analysis that traders use to underpin investment decisions. Thursday alone brought the biggest reversal for the Nasdaq 100 Index since April, a swing of almost 3 percent amid relatively little news. That was after the overnight futures session began with so much selling pressure the exchange operator had to pause trading to ensure orderly execution.
All Around the World, Central Bank Independence Is Under Threat
South Africa’s top monetary policy maker spoke for his peers around the world last week when he declared that central-bank independence from political meddling is no longer just an “emerging market phenomenon.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank are feeling the heat from elected lawmakers, while India and Turkey are among others under pressure.
“There’s concern among the central-banking community that the independence of central banks could be under threat,” South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said.
Executions in South Sudan Violate International Law, Amnesty Says
Amnesty International urged South Sudan to abolish the death penalty, saying at least seven people, including one who was a child at the time of their crime, were executed in 2018, the most in any year since the war-torn country gained independence.
The London-based group also raised concern over 135 people on death row who it said have been rounded up from prisons nationwide and sent to facilities in the capital, Juba, and the northwestern town of Wau that are notorious for executions. A spokesman for South Sudan’s president denied any executions were carried out this year.
The Guardian
Trump rolls back climate change rule that restricted new coal plants
The Trump administration is rolling back a climate change regulation that restricted new coal plants.
The change is mostly symbolic – but nevertheless sends a strong signal. Companies in the US are not building plants that burn coal because burning natural gas is cheaper and creates less pollution. Renewable power has also eaten into coal’s market share.
But the Obama-era rule for new coal plants has long been a target of the industry. It would have effectively required technology to capture the carbon dioxide that traps heat on earth and causes climate change. That technology is not in use on a commercial scale. A draft replacement rule would allow new coal plants that meet certain efficiency requirements.
Rightwing taskforce secretly approves anti-environment resolutions
Inside a little-known bulwark of conservative state policy, in a hotel conference room in Washington DC, state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists last week voted for a slate of anti-environment measures.
They approved resolutions supporting stripping tax benefits from electric vehicles and endorsing Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel energy agenda. And they voted down a proposal to limit monopoly control of the power industry, which backers said would give consumers more choice and help grow renewable electricity faster and more cheaply.
The group, a taskforce of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), did so behind closed doors. They barred press from the rooms where they called roll. When voice votes were close and a tally was required, the business representatives weighing in on what kinds of policies state legislatures should pursue voted in secret. They cast ballots on paper, in a change that four sources said organizers announced was meant to keep the process confidential from reporters.
Welcome to the trip of your life: the rise of underground LSD guides
Steve has cops in his family, so he doesn’t tell many people about his work as an underground psychedelic guide. The work takes up a significant amount of his time – around once a week, he’ll meet a client in their home or in a rented home, dose them with MDMA or hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms, and sit with them while they trip for up to 10 hours – but he doesn’t tell his siblings, parents or roommates about it, nor his fellow psychology PhD students.
They would probably never guess, either: Steve doesn’t display any signs of involvement with a stigmatized counterculture that many Americans still associate with its flamboyant 1960s figureheads. He’s a bespectacled, soft-spoken former business school student who plays in a brass band and works part-time as an over-the-phone mental health counselor. After one glass of wine, he says: “Whoa, I’m feeling a little drunk.”
But if you probe, he might tell you about the time he took psilocybin and a “snake god” entered his body and left him convulsing on the floor for an hour. (The snake god was benevolent, he says, and the convulsing was cathartic, “a tremendous discharge of anxious energy”.)
Reuters
U.S. Supreme Court appears wary of expanding 'double jeopardy'
U.S. Supreme Court justices on Thursday expressed skepticism about putting limits on criminal charges being brought against people for the same offenses by both federal and state prosecutors in a case involving an Alabama man charged with illegally possessing a gun.
Depending on how the court rules, the case could have implications for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and any coordination between Moscow and Republican Donald Trump’s campaign.
A ruling against the government could limit the ability of states to bring charges against anyone charged by Mueller whom Trump might pardon. The president has not ruled out pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on tax and bank fraud charges.
Fearing 'Act IV' of unrest, France to close Eiffel Tower, Louvre, at weekend
France will close the Eiffel Tower and other tourism landmarks in Paris and draft in thousands more security forces on Saturday to stave off another wave of violent protests in the country over living costs.
With protesters from the “yellow vest” movement calling on social media for “Act IV” - a fourth weekend of protest - Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said 89,000 police nationwide would be deployed to stop a repeat of last Saturday’s mayhem across France.
About 8,000 of these would be deployed in Paris where rioters torched cars and looted shops off the famed Champs Elysees boulevard, and defaced the Arc de Triomphe with graffiti directed at President Emmanuel Macron.
Rejecting suggestions of delay, PM May's team says Brexit vote will go ahead
Parliament’s vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal will go ahead on Dec. 11, her office said on Thursday, rejecting suggestions from lawmakers that she should seek ways to avoid a defeat so big it might bring down the government.
BBC News
Afghanistan's 'Little Messi' flees home after Taliban threats, says family
A young Afghan boy who was made famous online for his devotion to footballer Lionel Messi has been forced to flee his home for the second time.
Murtaza Ahmadi, now aged seven, went viral in 2016 after being photographed wearing a homemade Messi shirt, fashioned out of a plastic bag. He later met his hero in Qatar.
His family say they have now abandoned their home in Afghanistan, after receiving threats from the Taliban. They were living in the south-eastern Ghazni province - which militants have been targeting - and have escaped to the capital, Kabul.
Lula: Judge Sergio Moro had a political agenda
Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says he was jailed to prevent him from winning the 2018 presidential election which saw far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro elected.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC via letters from his cell, Lula said Judge Sergio Moro "did politics and not justice" when he sentenced him.
Mr Moro says the verdict was upheld by an appeals court and was not "a one-man decision".
Lula is serving a 12-year sentence.
Deutsche Welle
German army forms sixth tank battalion
The German army will be strengthened with a sixth tank battalion in response to rising security concerns in Europe, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced on Thursday.
"With this, the German army will grow for the first time in decades," von der Leyen said at a military base near the western city of Münster. […]
The formation of the 500 soldier-strong battalion comes as Germany increases its defense spending in response to security threats from Russia and pressure from the United States to meet NATO defense budget targets.
UN General Assembly rejects US resolution to condemn Hamas
A US-sponsored draft resolution that would have condemned the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls Gaza, failed to win the required two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly on Thursday. The draft received 87 votes in favor, 57 against, 33 abstentions and 16 countries did not vote...
The vote to require a two-thirds majority was close, 75-72, with 26 abstentions and several countries changing their votes to "yes" at the last minute.
US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the assembly before the vote that it could make history and unconditionally speak out against Hamas, which she called "one of the most obvious and grotesque cases of terrorism in the world."
Vox
Trump’s North Korea strategy isn’t working
New evidence surfaced Wednesday showing that no matter what… Donald Trump says, talks with North Korea aren’t going well.
CNN reported that Pyongyang has expanded one of its long-range missile bases. That contradicts the Trump administration, which maintains that North Korean leader Kim Jong Unvowed to dismantle his nuclear program — not improve it — during his June meeting in Singapore with Trump.
But the new satellite imagery, added to images last month showing Pyongyang is continuing to develop its missile program, makes it clear that for now North Korea has no intention of granting Trump’s wishes.
A brief guide to the legal challenges against acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker
Legal challenges to the appointment of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker have been piling up.
[...] Trump selected Whitaker as the temporary replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned at the president’s request in November. It was a strange choice for a few reasons.
Whitaker served as Sessions’s chief of staff, which means Trump handpicked him for the role, rather than leaving Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and No. 2 at the Department of Justice, in charge.
Whitaker was also an odd choice for another reason: Prior to joining the administration, he had been a vocal and unabashed critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The most important country for the global climate no one is talking about
World leaders are gathered this month in Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the most important global meeting on climate change since the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris. At the top of agenda: getting countries to agree on rules to implement the Paris climate accords for 2020, when the pact goes into effect. […]
But flying well below the radar in all of this is Indonesia, currently the world’s fifth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, which come mainly from land use, land use change, and forestry. Today Indonesia stands out for how little it has done to implement policies that would enable it to meet its commitment under the Paris agreement: cutting emissions from deforestation by 29 percent below business-as-usual projections by 2030. […]
In fact, Indonesia is moving in the opposite direction. The government plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, and expand the production of palm oil for local biofuel consumption, which will involve further deforestation of carbon-rich tropical forests. Add the expansion of a car-centric transportation infrastructure, a growing middle class and very little investment in renewables, and you have the recipe for a climate disaster.
The Daily Beast
Russia Probe Democrats Want Another Shot at Erik Prince
House intelligence committee members are eager to have the founder of mercenary company Blackwater back for another round of interviews about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, according to three members of its incoming majority.
Democrats have lots of outstanding questions about Erik Prince’s curious January 2017 trip to the Seychelles, where, at the invitation of a coterie around the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, he met with an influential Russian moneyman. They also have concerns about Prince’s candor during their prior interview last year.
But Prince, through a spokesperson, suggested the committee may have to force him to return to Capitol Hill.
German Neo-Nazis Fell for Art Project and Outed Themselves
A leftist art collective in Germany said they were launching a project to identify neo-Nazi rioters. In reality, it was a hoax to trick neo-Nazis into outing themselves.
This summer unleashed a wave of violence in Chemnitz, Germany, where far-right extremists chased down immigrants and threw fascist salutes during a multi-day rally. The Nazi-era salutes are illegal in Germany, but most demonstrators evaded arrest and identification. But the art group Center for Political Beauty (abbreviated as “ZPS” in German) wanted to unveil the extremist networks behind the riots. They built a website that claimed to have identified the Chemnitz rioters. Then they sat back and waited while extremists started searching the site for their own names until ZPS revealed the stunt on Wednesday.
Trump Attorney General Favorite William Barr Thought Clinton ‘Should Be Investigated’
The top candidate to be the next attorney general didn't back President Trump in the election but did endorse his view that the Justice Department should have investigated Hillary Clinton more.
“I don’t think all this stuff about throwing [Clinton] in jail or jumping to the conclusion that she should be prosecuted is appropriate,” William Barr told The Washington Post last year, “but I do think that there are things that should be investigated that haven't been investigated.”
Ars Technica
Iranians indicted in Atlanta city government ransomware attack
The US Attorney's Office for the District of Northern Georgia announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury had returned indictments against two Iranian nationals charged with executing the March 2018 ransomware attack that paralyzed Atlanta city government services for over a week. Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammed Mehdi Shah Mansouri are accused of using the Samsam ransomware to encrypt files on 3,789 City of Atlanta computers, including servers and workstations, in an attempt to extort Bitcoin from Atlanta officials.
Details leaked by City of Atlanta employees during the ransomware attack, including screenshots of the demand message posted on city computers, indicated that Samsam-based malware was used. A Samsam variant was used in a number of ransomware attacks on hospitals in 2016, with attackers using vulnerable Java Web services to gain entry in several cases. In more recent attacks, including one on the health industry companies Hancock Health and Allscripts, other methods were used to gain access, including Remote Desktop Protocol hacks that gave the attackers direct access to Windows systems on the victims' networks.
The Atlanta attack was not a targeted state-sponsored attack. The attackers likely chose Atlanta based on a vulnerability scan.
Edge dies a death of a thousand cuts as Microsoft switches to Chromium
As reported earlier this week, Microsoft is going to use Google's Blink rendering engine and V8 JavaScript engine in its Edge browser, largely ending development of its own EdgeHTML rendering engine and Chakra JavaScript engine. This means that Microsoft will be using code from—and making contributions to—the Chromium open source project.
The company's browser will still be named Edge and should retain the current look and feel. The decision to switch was motivated primarily by compatibility problems: Web developers increasingly test their pages exclusively in Chrome, which has put Edge at a significant disadvantage. Microsoft's engineers have found that problematic pages could often be made Edge compatible with only very minor alterations, but because Web devs aren't using Edge at all, they don't even know that they need to change anything.
The story is, however, a little more complex. The initial version of Edge that shipped with the first version of Windows 10 was rudimentary, to say the least. It was the bare bones of a browser, but with extremely limited capabilities around things like tab management and password management, no extension model, and generally lacking in the creature comforts that represent the difference between a bare rendering engine and an actual usable browser. It also had stability issues; crashes and hangs were not uncommon.
Geckos’ new superpower is running on water; now we know how they do it
Geckos are known for being expert climbers, able to stick to any surface thanks to nearly 500,000 tiny hair-like structures on the bottoms of their feet. Now it turns out the little lizards can also zip along the surface of water at high speeds to elude predators. They can't do it for very long; the energy expenditure required is too great. But it's amazing they can do it at all. Scientists think they've pinpointed the mechanisms behind the feat, described in a new paper in Cell Biology.
The project started when co-author Ardian Jusufi, then a postdoc in the lab of University of California, Berkeley biophysicist Robert Full, was on vacation in Singapore during monsoon season. One day, after a big rain storm, he caught a gecko skimming across the water to escape a predator on video. The footage astounded everyone in the lab when he showed it to them. "It was super weird and unexpected, so naturally we had to test this," says co-author Jasmine Nirody, another former Full student who now splits her time between Rockefeller University and the University of Oxford.