The first Democratic Primary debates are in the record books. Harris, Warren and Castro appear to be the winners. Let’s see what happened in the last 24 hours or so.
NASA Announces New Dragonfly Drone Mission To Explore Titan
NASA announced Thursday that it is sending a drone-style quadcopter to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Dragonfly, as the mission is called, will be capable of soaring across the skies of Titan and landing intermittently to take scientific measurements, studying the world's mysterious atmosphere and topography while searching for hints of life (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) on the only world other than Earth in our solar system with standing liquid on its surface.
The New York Times reports: The mission will be developed and led from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Md. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2026. Once at Titan in 2034, Dragonfly will have a life span of at least two-and-a-half years, with a battery that will be recharged with a radioactive power source between flights. Cameras on Dragonfly will stream images during flight, offering people on Earth a bird's-eye view of the Saturn moon. In addition to a camera, Dragonfly will carry an assortment of scientific instruments: spectrometers to study Titan's composition; a suite of meteorology sensors; and even a seismometer to detect titanquakes when it lands on the ground. Drills in the landing skids will collect samples of the Titan surface for onboard analysis.
Airplane Contrails Will Do Triple the Damage They Do Today By 2050, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: The contrails left by airplanes last only hours. But they are now so widespread that their warming effect is greater than that of all the carbon dioxide emitted by airplanes that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the first flight of the Wright brothers. Worse still, this non-CO2 warming effect is set to triple by 2050, according to a study by Ulrike Burkhardt and colleagues at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany. Altogether, flying is responsible for around 5 percent of global warming, the team say, so this figure will soar even higher -- and no meaningful actions are being taken to prevent this.
The researchers used a computer model of the atmosphere to estimate how much warming contrails caused in 2006 -- the latest year for which a detailed air traffic inventory is available -- and how much they will cause by 2050, when air traffic is expected to be four times higher. The model takes account of not only of the change in air traffic volume, but also the location and altitude of flights, along with the changing climate. The team conclude that the warming effect of contrails will rise from 50 milliwatts per square meter of the earth's surface in 2006 to 160 mW/m^2 by 2050. In comparison, the warming due to CO2 from aviation will rise from 24 mW/m^2 to 84 mW/m^2 by 2050. If the airline industry improves fuel efficiency and reduces the number of soot particles by improving fuels and engines, the researchers say the warming from contrails by 2050 will be limited to 140 mW/m^2 and the warming from CO2 to 60 mW/m^2.
The study has been published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The Pentagon Has a Laser That Can Identify People From a Distance By Their Heartbeat
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: A new device, developed for the Pentagon after U.S. Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. "I don't want to say you could do it from space," says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon's Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office, "but longer ranges should be possible." Contact infrared sensors are often used to automatically record a patient's pulse. They work by detecting the changes in reflection of infrared light caused by blood flow. By contrast, the new device, called Jetson, uses a technique known as laser vibrometry to detect the surface movement caused by the heartbeat. This works though typical clothing like a shirt and a jacket (though not thicker clothing such as a winter coat).
NSA Improperly Collected US Phone Call Data After Saying Problem Was Fixed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The National Security Agency improperly collected phone call records of Americans last fall, months after a previous breach that compelled the agency to destroy millions of records from the contentious program, documents released Wednesday revealed. The redacted documents, obtained by the ACLU in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, do not indicate how many records NSA improperly collected in the October breach, nor which telecommunications provider submitted the improper data. "These documents provide further evidence that the NSA has consistently been unable to operate the call detail record program within the bounds of the law," the ACLU said in a letter to Congress this week lobbying for an end to the program. The letter says elements within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded the October violations had a "significant impact" on privacy and civil rights, but that the Americans affected were not told of the breach.
Meal-Delivery Company GrubHub is Buying Thousands of Restaurant Web Addresses, Preventing Mom and Pop From Owning Their Slice of Internet
H. Claire Brown, reporting for The New Food Economy: GrubHub's commission fees had been inching upward over the years she'd [anecdote in the story] been working with the platform. There was the flat transaction fee, which hovered around 3 or 4 percent. Then there were marketing fees and costs for additional promotions. Shivane says she feels like the platform is increasingly pay to play: Spend more to promote your restaurant, and see your search rankings rise. Cut down on marketing spend, and watch your restaurant fall to the bottom of the page and lose sales.
"It's putting us in a financial hole. Last month, I paid $7,000 to GrubHub. That's my rent for the month," Shivane says. The New Food Economy viewed the company's invoice to Shivane's restaurant -- it was actually $8,000. We agreed to use only her first name and last initial in this story because she still uses the platform and fears the company could retaliate by dropping her restaurant to the bottom of its search rankings. Frustrated, Shivane started exploring other options. She says she thought about bulking up her restaurant's web presence and offering orders on her own site through a different service, one that offered a flat monthly rate and no commission fee.
There was just one problem: Someone already owned the web domain that matched her restaurant's name. She looked up the buyer. It was GrubHub. The New Food Economy has found that GrubHub owns more than 23,000 web domains. Its subsidiary, Seamless, owns thousands. We've published the full list here. Most of them appear to correlate with the names of real restaurants. The company's most recent purchase was in May of this year. Grubhub purchased three different domains containing versions of Shivane's restaurant's name -- in 2012, 2013, and 2014. "I never gave them permission to do that," she says.
Hardly anybody has air conditioning there:
France records all-time highest temperature of 45.9C
France recorded temperatures nearly two degrees higher than its previous record and firefighters continued to battle historic wildfires in Spain as much of western Europe remained in the grip of an extreme early-summer heatwave on Friday.
The French state weather forecaster, Météo-France, said the temperature in Gallargues-le-Montueux in the Gard département hit 45.9C at 4.20pm on Friday.
The previous 2003 record of 44.1C was beaten twice before on Friday: first when the southeastern town of Carpentras reached 44.3C, then hours later when Villevieille, in Provence, hit 45.1C.
“This is historic,” a Météo-France meteorologist, Etienne Kapikian, said. “It’s the first time a temperature in excess of 45C has ever been recorded in France.” (114.62)
Also:
Germany's Temperature Record Smashed as Europe's Heat Wave Intensifies
Reader Iwastheone shares a report: Germany recorded its highest-ever June temperature on Wednesday, as much of continental Europe contends with a major heat wave. The German Weather Service said the mercury hit 38.6 degrees Celsius (101.5 Fahrenheit) at 2:50 p.m. local time in Coschen, on the country's border with Poland. The previous record stood at 38.5 Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit), which was measured in 1947 in Buhlertal, which lies close to France. The longevity of the previous record -- 72 years -- shows just how unusual and intense the current heat wave is in Europe. Any sign of quick relief is not on cards either.
Climate scientists have warned that heat waves such as this one are becoming more frequent and increasingly severe because of the climate crisis. Meteo-France, the French national weather authority, said the frequency of such events is expected to double by 2050. Temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) are forecast in a number of major cities across the continent, with meteorologists warning that higher humidity could make it feel even hotter.
May is an idiot, but even she is better than what we have:
'Despicable act': May confronts Putin over Salisbury poisoning
Theresa May has upbraided Vladimir Putin for the Salisbury poisoning, calling it a “truly despicable act”, during a frosty one-to-one meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka that is likely to be their last encounter.
After exchanging a handshake, during which May appeared stern, the pair held the first half of their 80-minute meeting alone, with only translators in the room.
A senior government official confirmed that before the meeting, the prime minister had read a defiant interview with the Russian president in the Financial Times, in which he declared liberalism to be “obsolete”.
According to a Downing Street spokesperson, she told Putin: “The use of a deadly nerve agent on the streets of Salisbury formed part of a wider pattern of unacceptable behaviour and was a truly despicable act that led to the death of a British citizen, Dawn Sturgess.”
And she confronted Putin with the fact that the UK had gathered “irrefutable evidence that Russia was behind the attack – based on painstaking investigations and cooperation with our allies”.
Fascist cops are not just here:
German far-right group 'used police data to compile death list'
A group of German rightwing extremists compiled a “death list” of leftwing and pro-refugee targets by accessing police records, then stockpiled weapons and ordered body bags and quicklime to kill and dispose of their victims, German media have reported, citing intelligence sources.
Germany’s general prosecutor had been investigating Nordkreuz (Northern Cross) since August 2017 on the suspicion the group was preparing a terrorist attack.
The 30-odd members of the group reportedly had close links to the police and military, and at least one member was still employed in the special commando unit of the state office of criminal investigations.
In the past, Nordkreuz was reported as being part of the “prepper” survivalist movement, whose followers prepare for doomsday scenarios such as the collapse of the prevailing social order.
However, a report by RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, a Hanover-based research agency with links to smaller regional newspapers, suggested the group was actively preparing the ground for a mass attack on political enemies.
Requiescat in pace:
Finland's news in Latin: 'For such a crazy idea we had a remarkable run'
The words the show’s dear listeners – or carissimi auditores – had been dreading came, of course, in Latin. “Nuntii Latini finiti,” was the blunt headline: after three decades on air, Finnish public radio’s weekly Latin news bulletin was over.
“It is a bit of a pity,” said Ari Meriläinen, the show’s producer for the past three seasons. “But it had to come to an end sometime. And 30 years is really quite a remarkable run. Especially for an idea as crazy as this.”
In terrarum orbe unicum – unique in the world – for most of its unexpectedly long life, Nuntii Latini was a five-minute review of world events, broadcast every Friday just after the main six o’clock news, in Latin, from Finland.
The Nordic nation has kept alive a noble tradition of classical studies, long considered an essential part of a sound humanist education. It also has its fair share of oddballs – some of whom are not averse to dabbling in Latin.
Jukka Ammondt, a literature professor, found fame in the 1990s by recording an album of Elvis Presley’s hits in Latin, including Ursus Taddeus, Glaudi Calcei and Menses Incertes (AKA Teddy Bear, Blue Suede Shoes and Suspicious Minds) and touring the US.
I have been to Rotorua. The Earth does a lot of spurting there:
New Zealand woman wakes to find giant, mud-spurting geyser in garden
When Rotorua resident Susan Gedye was awoken at 2am by “a lot of shaking and jolting” she thought it was an earthquake.
But then she headed downstairs at her suburban home and saw that her kitchen windows had steamed up and a large mud geyser had appeared in her garden.
Rotorua is known as a tourist hotspot for good reason. It is home to geothermal mud pools which bubble up and shoot geysers high into the air, giving parts of the town a sulphurous smell.
Gedye said when morning dawned on Wednesday, the mud geyser had grown even bigger.
Global War Against Women, Part 1:
Conflict drives global rise in sexual violence against women
Sexual violence is on the increase both inside and outside of wartime contexts and women remain the primary victims, warns new research.
In their report, researchers from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled) analysed data gathered from 400 recorded sexual violence events that occurred between January 2018 and June 2019.
They found an overall increase in reported events where the offender directly targeted women and girls; in only 5% of cases were the victims male.
At 140, the total number of reported events nearly doubled in the first three months of 2019 compared with the same period in 2018.
The report’s authors said this was “largely due to an upward trend in violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which consistently registers high levels of reported sexual violence”.
Global War Against Women, Part 2:
India arrests after women's heads shaved for resisting rape
Two people have been arrested in India's Bihar state after a group of men shaved the heads of two women as "punishment" for resisting rape.
The group, which included a local official, ambushed the mother and daughter in their home with the intent of raping them, police said.
When the women resisted, they assaulted them, shaved their heads and paraded them through the village.
Police say they are searching for five others involved in the incident.
"We were beaten with sticks very badly. I have injuries all over my body and my daughter also has some injuries," the mother told the ANI news agency.
The women also said that their heads were shaved in front of the entire village.
Global War Against Women, Part 3:
Creator of DeepNude, App That Undresses Photos of Women, Takes It Offline
The creator of DeepNude, an app that used a machine learning algorithm to "undress" images of clothed women, announced Thursday that he's killing the software after viral backlash for the way it objectifies women. From a report: On Wednesday, Motherboard reported that an anonymous programmer who goes by the alias "Alberto" created DeepNude, an app that takes an image of a clothed woman, and with one click and a few seconds, turns that image into a nude by algorithmically superimposing realistic-looking breasts and vulva onto her body. The algorithm uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), and is trained on thousands of images of naked women. DeepNude only works on images of women, Alberto said, because it's easy to find thousands of images of nude women online in porn.
Following Motherboard's story, the server for the application, which was available for Linux and Windows, crashed. By Thursday afternoon, the DeepNude twitter account announced that the app was dead: No other versions will be released and no one else would be granted to use the app. "We created this project for users' entertainment months ago," he wrote in a statement attached to a tweet. "We thought we were selling a few sales every month in a controlled manner... We never thought it would become viral and we would not be able to control traffic."
Who could have guessed:
One Year After Trump's Foxconn Groundbreaking, There is Almost Nothing To Show For It
Josh Dzieza, reporting for The Verge: It's been exactly one year since President Trump pushed a golden shovel into a field in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, breaking ground on a planned Foxconn factory he called "the eighth wonder of the world." "This is one of the great deals, ever," he said at the ceremony. The proposed facility would employ more than 13,000 Wisconsin workers and manufacture high-resolution LCD screens. And it would be huge, he said. "Think of it: more than 20 million feet, and that's probably going to be a minimal number," he claimed. The factory, Trump said, was evidence he was bringing manufacturing back to the United States, "restoring America's industrial might."
But Foxconn's plans were already shrinking. When then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wooed the company to the state with a subsidy package that came to total $4.5 billion, Foxconn had agreed to build a "Generation 10.5" facility that manufactured 75-inch LCD screens. But days before Trump's groundbreaking, the company acknowledged it would build a much smaller "Gen6" LCD factory, a type that makes smaller screens and requires far fewer workers. It would be the first of many changes. The last year has seen the factory shrink, get canceled, reappear, and undergo other shifts chronicled below. Even now, as concrete is finally being poured, it's unclear what exactly Foxconn is building in Mount Pleasant. Industry experts shown Foxconn's building plans say it does not appear to even be the scaled-down Gen6 LCD factory. If the last year is any guide, the whipsawing is far from over.
Disappeared Argentina activists' son finds family after 40 years
A man whose parents were abducted by Argentinean secret service agents in 1977 has been reunited with his biological family.
Javier Darroux Mijalchuk was just four months old when his father and pregnant mother disappeared in Buenos Aires.
He was later adopted by a family who did not know his background.
But a few years ago, he started to doubt his true identity, and sought help from the human rights organisation Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
The group tracks down the children of dissidents killed or forcibly disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, and introduces them to their biological families.
Mr Darroux is the 130th child who the organisation has identified, after carrying out DNA tests.
Second U.S. Democratic debate sets TV ratings record
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The second debate among Democrats running for U.S. president attracted 18.1 million television viewers across three networks, a record audience for a Democratic primary face-off, NBC News said on Friday.
Thursday’s event featuring front-runners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders was shown on broadcaster NBC, cable channel MSNBC and Spanish-language network Telemundo, all owned by Comcast Corp.
The previous record for a Democratic debate was 15.8 million viewers, set in October 2015. Republican candidates set the all-time record for a primary debate audience in August 2015, when 24 million tuned in for the first performance by Donald Trump in a debate on Fox News Channel.
During Thursday’s event, candidate Kamala Harris dominated her rivals and confronted Biden about his opposition to school busing in the 1970s.
It must have been hot AF on that pitch:
Rapinoe double takes U.S past France into semi-finals
PARIS (Reuters) - Megan Rapinoe struck twice as the United States beat hosts France 2-1 in the women’s World Cup quarter-finals at the Parc des Princes on Friday to set up a last-four clash with England.
Rapinoe, who was involved in a spat with U.S. President Donald Trump during the build up to the game, opened the scoring in the fifth minute with a low-struck free-kick from the left that went in untouched through a crowd of players.
The 33-year-old Rapinoe added their second goal in the 65th minute and although France got back in the game with a Wendie Renard header in the 81st, the U.S held firm to maintain their record of never missing out on the World Cup semi-finals.
Hmm:
Apple moves Mac Pro production to China from U.S.: Wall Street Journal
(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is shifting manufacturing of its new Mac Pro desktop computer to China from the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The move comes at a time when the Trump administration has threatened to impose new levies to cover nearly all imports from China and pressured Apple and other manufacturers to make their products in the United States if they want to avoid tariffs.
Last week, Apple asked its major suppliers to assess the cost implications of moving 15% to 30% of their production capacity from China to Southeast Asia, according to a Nikkei report.
“If true, suggests to me that Apple has tremendous confidence that the U.S. and China will be able to solve their trade dispute and do so in the near-future,” D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte said in an email.
Maybe laundering money for Vlad is not as lucrative as it used to be:
Deutsche Bank considering up to 20,000 job cuts, WSJ reports
(Reuters) - Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) is considering cutting 15,000 to 20,000 jobs, or more than one in six full-time positions globally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
The layoffs would probably take place over more than a year and would spread across regions and businesses, the Journal said on.wsj.com/2KKw9LX.
Top-level talks about the restructuring took place on Thursday and Friday, but no final decisions have been made, a source close to the matter told Reuters.
Deutsche Bank is completing a plan that may eliminate hundreds of positions in equities trading and research, as well as derivatives trading, as part of a broad restructuring, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources.
Good:
US judge blocks Indiana 2nd trimester abortion procedure ban
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge blocked an Indiana law that would ban a second-trimester abortion procedure on Friday, just days before the law was set to come into force.
The order putting the Indiana law on hold was released hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revive a similar law in Alabama that sought to ban dilation and evacuation abortions.
The law passed by Indiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature this spring calls the procedure “dismemberment abortion.” It was set to become effective on July 1.
GIS to the rescue:
40 tons of fishing nets retrieved in Pacific Ocean cleanup
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In a mission to clean up trash floating in the ocean, environmentalists pulled 40 tons (36 metric tons) of abandoned fishing nets this month from an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Mariners on a 140-foot (43-meter) cargo sailboat outfitted with a crane voyaged from Hawaii to the heart of the Pacific Ocean, where they retrieved the haul of mostly plastic fishing nets as part of an effort to rid the waters of the nets that entangle whales, turtles and fish and damage coral reefs.
The volunteers with the California-based nonprofit Ocean Voyages Institute fished out the derelict nets from a marine gyre location where ocean currents converge between Hawaii and California during their 25-day expedition, the group’s founder, Mary Crowley, announced Friday.
Dotard’s next Surgeon General:
Court hears appeal on ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli’s fraud case
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court heard arguments Friday over whether the securities fraud conviction against former drug company CEO Martin Shkreli, known as “Pharma Bro,” should be thrown out.
Defense attorney Mark Baker urged the court in New York City to overturn a 2017 guilty verdict for Shkreli, claiming that the trial judge gave confusing instructions to jurors before their deliberations about whether it needed to find his client intentionally set out to cheat investors.
Baker noted that the same jury also acquitted Shkreli on related wire fraud charges, saying, “The split verdict speaks volumes.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alixandra Smith argued that the instructions were proper. The court is expected to issue a written ruling at a later date.
And that’s our apocolyptelegraph for tonight.