News gathered 2024-07-13
(date: 2024-07-13 10:04:57)
America’s pioneering sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer dies at 96
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.
Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.
Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I still hold old-fashioned values, and I’m a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”
Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.
But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, “Sexually Speaking,” into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had a nonjudgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.
Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.
She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.
“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.
She normalized the use of words such as “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her in their list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.”
Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.
In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.
Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never shot at anyone.
Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.
She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Although not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.
The marriage ended in 1955; the next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father to her daughter, Miriam.
In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple was married and had a son, Joel. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.
After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. While there she developed a specialty — instructing professors how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the core of her curriculum.
“I soon realized that while I knew enough about education, I did not really know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided take classes with the renowned sex therapist, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.
It was there that she had discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”
In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.
She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a line of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had her own board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex,” and a series of calendars.
Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with conservative voices.
Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A is a low-cost RISC-V dev board with 2 PCIe 2.0 slots, up to 16GB of RAM
date: 2024-07-13, from: Liliputing
The Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A is a compact with a SpacemiT K1 RISC-V processor featuring eight CPU cores with support for speeds up to 1.6 GHz, an 819 MHz Imagination BXE-2-32 GPU, and a neural processing unit with up to 2 TOPS Of AI performance. But there are a few things that make this little computer […]
The post Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A is a low-cost RISC-V dev board with 2 PCIe 2.0 slots, up to 16GB of RAM appeared first on Liliputing.
Iran’s Pezeshkian vows balance with all countries, warns US against pressure
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s newly elected president said his government will create “balance in relations with all countries” in line with national interests and the prerequisites for peace but stressed to the United States that his country “will not respond to pressure.”
Masoud Pezeshkian penned “My Message To The New World” in the country’s state-owned Tehran Times late Friday, praising the latest presidential election that “demonstrated remarkable stability” and vowing to uphold “promises I made during my campaign.”
Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, bested hard-liner former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili to clinch the July 5 runoff election to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May.
He said in his message his administration would “prioritize strengthening relations with our neighbors” and urged Arab countries to use “all diplomatic leverages” to push for a lasting cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that started October 7.
Iran has long supported the militant group Hamas, and Pezeshkian on Wednesday expressed his all-out support of “the Palestinian resistance” in a message to the group’s chief, Ismail Haniyeh.
Pezeshkian, in the letter Friday, hailed his country’s relations with Russia and China, which “consistently stood by us during challenging times.” He said Moscow was “a valued strategic ally” and his government would expand bilateral cooperation. He also expressed willingness to “support initiatives aimed at” achieving peace between Russia and Ukraine in the ongoing war.
The president also said he looked forward to furthering cooperation with Beijing and applauded it for brokering a deal to normalize relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia after seven years of diplomatic tensions.
Pezeshkian said he looks forward to engaging in constructive dialogue with European countries “based on principles of mutual respect” despite a relationship that has known “its ups and downs.”
In May 2018, the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — a nuclear agreement that also included Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. Since then, Western powers have accused the Islamic Republic of expanding its nuclear program and enriching uranium to an unprecedented 60% level, near-weapons-grade levels. The U.S. has issued severe, mainly economic, sanctions against Iran.
Pezeshkian accused the European countries of reneging on commitments made, following the U.S. withdrawal, to ensure “effective banking transactions, effective protection of companies from U.S. sanctions, and the promotion of investments in Iran.” However, he added there were still many opportunities for collaboration between Iran and Europe.
He then addressed the U.S., underscoring his country’s refusal to “respond to pressure,” adding that Iran “entered the JCPOA in 2015 in good faith and fully met our obligations.” Pezeshkian said the U.S. backing out has inflicted “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to our economy” and caused “untold suffering, death and destruction on the Iranian people — particularly during the COVID pandemic” due to sanctions.
Pezeshkian said Western countries “not only missed a historic opportunity to reduce and manage tensions in the region and the world, but also seriously undermined the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” He emphasized that “Iran’s defense doctrine does not include nuclear weapons.”
Iran has held indirect talks with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, although there’s been no clear movement toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Pezeshkian also accused the U.S. administration in his open letter of escalating “hostilities” by assassinating General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military activities, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in neighboring Iraq in 2020.
Besides regional turmoil and tense relations over Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s president faces many challenges locally. He must now convince an angry public — many under financial duress due to sanctions, stubbornly high inflation and unemployment — that he can make the changes promised while dealing with an administration still largely governed by hard-liners.
Pezeshkian has aligned himself with other moderate and reformist figures since his presidential campaign. His main advocate has been former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who reached the 2015 JCPOA. Pezeshkian appointed Zarif as the head of the Strategic Council for the administration’s transition period. The council, comprised of experts and advisers, will focus on assessing potential candidates for key cabinet positions and ensuring a seamless handover of leadership.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden for President.
It Is Time to Tell the President
date: 2024-07-13, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The fact is that elderly people often think that they know better than most but that they can certainly be mistaken about their aging bodies.
The post It Is Time to Tell the President appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/13/it-is-time-to-tell-the-president/
The Old Choice
date: 2024-07-13, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Is Biden so old that we should take away Obamacare and end health care for tens of millions of needy Americans?
The post The Old Choice appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/13/the-old-choice/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Give people something to link to so they can talk about your features and ideas.
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/13/give-people-something-to-link-to/
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s diminutive and pioneering sex therapist, dies at 96
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, pioneering sex therapist, dies at 96.
https://apnews.com/article/ruth-westheimer-dies-6d4af57b5f034bf9a90977de41b88735
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I'm not a big fan of comments, and certainly not interested in comments on my podcasts. What a horrible thought. All the abusers living rent free in my head.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-07-09/podcast-app-comments-update/
Barbora Krejcikova wins Wimbledon for her second Grand Slam trophy by beating Jasmine Paolini
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Barbora Krejcikova wins Wimbledon for her second Grand Slam trophy by beating Jasmine Paolini.
Three words to send a chill down your spine: Snowflake. Intrusion. Alert
date: 2024-07-13, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
And can AI save us from the scourge of malware? In theory, why not, but in practice … Color us skeptical
Kettle For this week’s Kettle episode, in which our journos as usual get together for an end-of-week chat about the news, it’s security, security, security.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/13/snowflake_kettle/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
An open tweet to Keith Olbermann.
https://x.com/davewiner/status/1812139277418971640
Map: Lake Fire in Santa Barbara County, perimeter and evacuations
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
The evacuation zone had grown for five straight days and now exceeds 150 square miles.
‘I don’t want to repeat this mistake’: Oakland rapper sentenced to federal prison for gun possession
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Masia Hollins, 23, was charged in 2023, but later arrested in connection with a new gun case and a police chase.
Two households, both alike in dignity
date: 2024-07-13, from: Status-Q blog
Two long-established names in the world of journalism are approaching the challenges of AI in very different ways. The New York Times is suing OpenAI, in an expensive landmark case that the world is watching carefully, because it could have very far-reaching ramifications. The Atlantic, on the other hand, has just done a deal with Continue Reading
https://statusq.org/archives/2024/07/13/12134/
Lock in 5% CDs before the Fed starts cutting rates
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Last year’s 5% 1-year Treasury rates were the highest since 2000.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/13/lock-in-5-cds-before-the-fed-starts-cutting-rates/
@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2024-07-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)
I am ready for October
https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/112779622203394203
Older voters could be a sweet spot for Biden in November
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President Joe Biden’s halting performance at last month’s presidential debate triggered questions about the president’s age and ability to serve another four years. One group of voters that might empathize with the president’s plight are older people. Historically, people over 65 are the most reliable bloc of voters in presidential elections. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum.
https://www.voanews.com/a/7696659.html
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
I wanted to see if my browser supports the marquee element from the ancient web. It does.
http://scripting.com/code/testing/marquee/
Q&A: AI vs. the metaverse — How artificial intelligence might change the future of the internet
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Author and investor Matthew Ball has revised and expanded his book “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything,” even giving it a new subtitle: “Building the Spatial Internet.”
Column: Do we need movie stars?
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Plenty of screen actors these days are successful but we don’t think of them as stars. Why is that, and what’s different from the era of De Niro and Dunaway?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/13/column-do-we-need-movie-stars/
How the continuum hypothesis could have been a fundamental axiom
date: 2024-07-13, from: Logic Matters blog
Like many, I greatly admire Joel Hamkins’s terrific combination of technical prowess and expository ability as a mathematician. I’ve learnt a great deal from him. And I hope to learn more: he is promising us a book on ten ways of proving Gödelian incompleteness. Wouldn’t it be great, too, if one day he wrote an […]
The post How the continuum hypothesis could have been a fundamental axiom appeared first on Logic Matters.
When ‘universal’ pre-K really isn’t: Barriers to participating abound
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Even when states claim to have “universal” pre-K for 4-year-olds and sometimes 3-year-olds, some of the most comprehensive programs only serve a slice of the kids who are eligible.
Mishandled bodies, mixed-up remains prompt tougher funeral home regulations
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Some states have looked to make it easier to work in funeral homes and crematoriums. After grisly incidents at some facilities, lawmakers have sought to tighten control over the industry.
Emergency fund amount: How much should you have in emergency savings?
date: 2024-07-13, from: San Jose Mercury News
Bankrate’s 2024 Annual Emergency Savings Report found that the majority of U.S. adults (56 percent) do not have enough emergency savings to cover even three months of expenses.
The History of Zilog & Z80
date: 2024-07-13, from: Tilde.news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFcdrauJ94
Batteries Are So Back
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Lever News
Plus, meddling homeowner associations are put in their place, retirees put up a good fight, and the left wins big across the pond.
https://www.levernews.com/batteries-are-so-back/
Always and everywhere a political phenomenon
date: 2024-07-13, from: Enlightenment Economics
I was quite excited about Carola Binder’s Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy, as I expected something similar to Thomas Stapleford’s (2009) The Cost of Living in America. It isn’t about price indices, however, but about monetary policy … Continue reading
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-13, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Trump Immunity Ruling May Give Him Free Pass To Steal An Election.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-immunity-ruling-steal-election_n_66918e38e4b04f47125d9ed8
Our Blended Newsroom’s Summer Reading List
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Markup blog
Chip away at your TBR pile with these recs
https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2024/07/13/our-blended-newsrooms-summer-reading-list
Canada bolsters Arctic defense in face of Russian, Chinese aggression
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
Toronto, Canada — Canada says it is going shopping for 12 conventionally powered submarines capable of operating under the Arctic ice to enhance maritime security in a region that is fast gaining strategic significance in the face of climate change.
The purchase is expected to help ease mounting pressure on Ottawa — one of the lowest-spending NATO members — to meet the alliance’s commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense.
“As the country with the longest coastline in the world, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines,” Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair said in a statement Wednesday as NATO leaders were meeting in Washington.
The ministry said it has begun meeting with manufacturers and will formally invite bids for the sale in the fall.
“Canada’s key submarine capability requirements will be stealth, lethality, persistence and Arctic deployability — meaning that the submarine must have extended range and endurance,” the statement said.
“Canada’s new fleet will need to provide a unique combination of these requirements to ensure that Canada can detect, track, deter and, if necessary, defeat adversaries in all three of Canada’s oceans while contributing meaningfully alongside allies and enabling the government of Canada to deploy this fleet abroad in support of our partners and allies.”
A day later in Washington, Canada, the United States and Finland issued a joint statement announcing an agreement to build icebreakers for the Arctic region.
The pact calls for enhanced information sharing on polar icebreaker production, allowing for workers and experts from each country to train in shipyards across all three, and promoting to allies the purchase of polar icebreakers from American, Finnish or Canadian shipyards for their own needs, The Associated Press reported.
The AP quoted Daleep Singh, the White House deputy national security adviser for international economics, saying the agreement would demonstrate to Russia and China that the U.S. and allies will “doggedly pursue collaboration on industrial policy to increase our competitive edge.”
Singh noted that the U.S. has two icebreakers, and both are nearing the end of their usable life. Finland has 12 icebreakers and Canada has nine, while Russia has 36, according to U.S. Coast Guard data.
The same day in Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government had signed “a trilateral letter of intent with Germany and Norway to establish a strategic partnership aimed at strengthening maritime security cooperation in the North Atlantic in support of NATO’s deterrence and defense.”
Trudeau also said for the first time that Canada expects to reach NATO’s 2% of GDP spending target by 2032. Canada also pledged $367 million in new military aid to Ukraine ahead of a meeting Wednesday between Trudeau and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The commitments come in the face of mounting pressure for Canada to spend more on defense. A founding member of NATO, it is the alliance’s fifth-lowest spending member relative to GDP and until this week had pledged only to spend 1.76% of GDP by the 2029-30 budget year.
In a speech Monday, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson called Canada’s level of defense spending “shameful.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell posted, “It’s time for our northern ally to invest seriously.”
NATO allies first agreed to the 2% defense spending threshold in 2006 and reaffirmed it in 2014 and 2023. This year, 23 of the 32 member states will meet or exceed that target.
Several nations have been stepping up their military and commercial capabilities in the Arctic as the receding ice pack makes navigation and petrochemical exploration in the Arctic Ocean more practicable. A sea route across Russia’s Arctic coastline promises to provide a shorter sea route between China and Europe.
Despite China’s distance from the Arctic Ocean, Beijing has dubbed itself a “near-Arctic country” to try to stake a bigger claim in the region.
VOA’s Zhang Zhenyu wrote this article and Adrianna Zhang contributed.
Our View | MacGregor Thumbs Her Nose at Voters
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
By The Signal Editorial Board A decades-long career in local public service is coming to an ignominious end at College of the Canyons. And no, we’re not talking about the […]
The post Our View | MacGregor Thumbs Her Nose at Voters appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/our-view-macgregor-thumbs-her-nose-at-voters/
Neil Fitzgerald | A Coverup of Titanic Proportions
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
As I write this, President Joe Biden has just stood on stage at the NATO summit in front of the world’s media and introduced President Volodomyr Zelensky as President Putin. […]
The post Neil Fitzgerald | A Coverup of Titanic Proportions appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/neil-fitzgerald-a-coverup-of-titanic-proportions/
Dr. Gene Dorio | Passing the Torch
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
One difficult responsibility as a physician is to recognize physical frailties, especially those indicating patients are incapable of driving. Too often in my medical practice, most resistance to giving up […]
The post Dr. Gene Dorio | Passing the Torch appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/dr-gene-dorio-passing-the-torch/
Ron Perry | It’s Time to Step Aside
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
First let me state that I am a conservative. However, I genuinely felt sorry for our president when I watched the debate. This is a man who definitely has dementia […]
The post Ron Perry | It’s Time to Step Aside appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/ron-perry-its-time-to-step-aside/
Bicyclists: Rules of the road apply to you, too
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
Question: Mr. Schlund. I am sure you have addressed this many times, but could you once again remind bicyclists that they are subject to the same laws as motorists? Twice […]
The post Bicyclists: Rules of the road apply to you, too appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/bicyclists-rules-of-the-road-apply-to-you-too/
Robert Lamoureux | You could time this hot water flow with a sundial
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
Question: Hello sir, I am so happy that there is this space to ask you questions. I am a first-time homeowner and, after living in the home for a few […]
The post Robert Lamoureux | You could time this hot water flow with a sundial appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/robert-lamoureux-you-could-time-this-hot-water-flow-with-a-sundial/
The Time Ranger | The Lost Treasure Beneath Castaic Lake
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
I just might be the only galoot in town who notices that every year, we have just almost exactly 100 days of hot weather. It usually starts on July 4 […]
The post The Time Ranger | The Lost Treasure Beneath Castaic Lake appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/the-time-ranger-the-lost-treasure-beneath-castaic-lake/
Game dev accuses Intel of selling ‘defective’ Raptor Lake CPUs
date: 2024-07-13, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
High-end processor instability headaches, failures pushed one studio to switch to AMD
One game developer says it’s had enough of Intel’s 13th and 14th-generation Core microprocessors, calling them “defective.”…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/13/game_raptor_intel/
Today in SCV History (July 13)
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1884 – Hardison and Stewart start drilling Star No. 1 oil well in Pico Canyon; later form Union Oil Co. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-13/
US sanctions Venezuela gang for spreading criminal activity across Latin America
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
MIAMI — The Biden administration on Thursday sanctioned a Venezuelan gang allegedly behind a spree of kidnappings, extortion and other violent crimes tied to migrants that have spread across Latin America and the United States.
The U.S. also offered a $12 million reward for the arrest of three leaders of Tren de Aragua, which now joins the MS-13 gang from El Salvador and the Mafia-styled Camorra from Italy on a list of transnational criminal organizations banned from doing business in the U.S.
“Tren de Aragua poses a deadly criminal threat across the region,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement, adding that it often preys on vulnerable populations such as migrant women and girls for sex trafficking.
“When victims seek to escape this exploitation, Tren de Aragua members often kill them and publicize their deaths as a threat to others,” the statement added.
The Tren de Aragua traces its origins to more than a decade ago, to an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua where a number of hardened criminals were held. But it has expanded in recent years as millions of desperate Venezuelans fled President Nicolás Maduro’s rule and migrated to other parts of Latin America or the U.S.
Authorities in countries such as Colombia, Peru and Ecuador — with large populations of Venezuelan migrants — have accused the group of being behind a spree of violent crimes in a region that has long had some of the highest murder rates in the world.
Initially its focus was exploiting Venezuelan migrants through loan sharking, human trafficking and the smuggling of contraband goods to and from Venezuela.
But as the Venezuelan diaspora has settled more permanently abroad, it has joined — and sometimes clashed — with homegrown criminal syndicates engaged in drug trafficking, extortion of local businesses and murders for hire.
Among the groups the Treasury Department said the gang has teamed up with is Primeiro Comando da Capital, a notorious organized crime group out of Brazil that has also been sanctioned by the U.S.
Earlier this year, prosecutors in Chile blamed the gang, whose name means “train” in Spanish, for the killing of a Venezuelan army official who had sought refuge in that country after partaking in a failed plot to overthrow Maduro.
“The Tren de Aragua is not a vertically integrated criminal structure, but rather a federation of different gangs,” said Jeremy McDermott, the Colombia-based co-director of InSight Crime, which this month published a report on the gang’s expansion.
“It has now become a franchise name for Venezuelan criminal structures operating in the region, with weakening coherence now that its home prison base is no more,” McDermott said.
The group is led by Hector Guerrero, who was jailed years ago for killing a police officer, according to InSight Crime. Guerrero, better known by his alias El Nino, or Spanish for “the boy,” later escaped and then was recaptured in 2013, returning to the prison in Aragua where the criminal enterprise was then headquartered.
He fled prison again more recently, as Venezuelan authorities tried to reassert control over its prison population.
His current whereabouts are unknown but the U.S. State Department, which has offered up to $12 million for his arrest and that of two other gang leaders, said it believes Guerrero and Giovanny San Vicente, another target of the U.S. bounty, are believed to be living in Colombia.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who co-chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has warned that if left unchecked, the Tren de Aragua could also start terrorizing American cities.
Among the nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants that have crossed into the U.S. in recent years are suspected gang members tied to police shootings, human trafficking and other crimes although there’s no evidence that the gang has set up an organizational structure in the U.S., McDermott said.
“Now we are seeing evidence that they have made it into the United States. Every single day, we’re seeing reports from Chicago, South Florida, and New York that these gang members are here,” Rubio said at a Senate hearing in April.
The White House, in a statement on Thursday, said the Department of Homeland Security has implemented enhanced screening to vet and better identify known or suspected gang members, including Tren de Aragua members.
Maduro’s government has accused opponents of exaggerating the reach of Tren de Aragua to tarnish its reputation and said that authorities dismantled the group last year when security forces retook control of the prison that had served as its hub of illicit activity.
Hours after the U.S. sanctioned the gang, the government announced that a brother of the gang’s leader, who was arrested in Barcelona earlier this year, arrived home pursuant to a Venezuelan extradition request to Spain.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said that Gerso Guerrero, who was arrested earlier this year in Barcelona, faces up to 30 years in prison — the maximum in Venezuela — on multiple criminal charges including extortion, money laundering, weapons trafficking and terrorism.
WW I veteran is first Tulsa Race Massacre victim identified from mass graves
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
OKLAHOMA CITY — A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said Friday.
Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of C.L. Daniel from Georgia were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. He was in his 20s when he was killed.
“This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,” Bynum said.
A white mob massacred as many as many as 300 Black people over the span of two days in 1921, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a thriving community known as Black Wall Street and ended with thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard.
Brenda Nails-Alford, a descendant of massacre survivors and a member of the committee overseeing the search for victims, said the identification brought her to tears.
“This is an awesome day, a day that has taken forever to come to fruition,” Nails-Alford said.
More than 120 graves were found during searches that began in 2020, with forensic analysis and DNA collected from about 30 sets of remains. Daniel’s remains are the first from those graves to be linked directly to the massacre.
The breakthrough for identifying Daniel came when investigators found a 1936 letter from his mother’s attorney seeking veteran’s benefits. Alison Wilde, a forensic scientist with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Forensics, said the letter provided by the National Archives convinced investigators that Daniel was killed in the massacre.
No members of Daniel’s family, many of whom don’t know each other, attended the news conference announcing the identification, which was made earlier this week, Wilde said.
“I think it’s shocking news, to say the least” for the family, Wilde said. “We know we’ve brought a lot into their lives.”
The massacre began when a white mob, including some deputized by authorities, looted and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood District. More than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches were destroyed from May 31-June 1.
Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield said Daniel’s remains were fragmented and a cause of death could not be determined.
“We didn’t see any sign of gunshot wounds, but if the bullet doesn’t hit bone or isn’t retained within the body, how would we detect it?”
Oklahoma state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said the remains that were exhumed, including Daniel, were found in simple wooden boxes — and Daniel’s was too small for him.
“They had to bend his legs somewhat at the knee in order to get him to fit,” Stackelbeck said. “His head and his feet both touched either end of the casket.”
Stackelbeck said investigators were searching for simple caskets because they were described in newspaper articles at the time, death certificates, and funeral home records as the type used for burials of massacre victims.
Bynum said the next search for victims will begin July 22.
“We’ll continue the search until we find everybody that we can,” Bynum said.
A lawsuit by the two known living survivors of the massacre was dismissed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in June.
Attorneys for the two, Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, are asking the court to reconsider the decision. Attorneys are also asking the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which allows for the reopening of cold cases of violent crimes against Black people committed before 1970.
US grocery stores add ammo to vending machines
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A company has installed computerized vending machines to sell ammunition in grocery stores in Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas, allowing patrons to pick up bullets along with a gallon of milk.
American Rounds said their machines use an identification scanner and facial recognition software to verify the purchaser’s age and are as “quick and easy” to use as a computer tablet. But advocates worry that selling bullets out of vending machines will lead to more shootings in the U.S., where gun violence killed at least 33 people on Independence Day alone.
The company maintains the age-verification technology means that the transactions are as secure, or more secure, than online sales, which may not require the purchaser to submit proof of age, or at retail stores, where there is a risk of shoplifting.
“I’m very thankful for those who are taking the time to get to know us and not just making assumptions about what we’re about,” CEO Grant Magers said. “We are very pro-Second Amendment, but we are for responsible gun ownership, and we hope we’re improving the environment for the community.”
There have been 15 mass killings involving a firearm so far in 2024, compared to 39 in 2023, according to a database maintained in a partnership of The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
“Innovations that make ammunition sales more secure via facial recognition, age verification, and the tracking of serial sales are promising safety measures that belong in gun stores, not in the place where you buy your kids milk,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “In a country awash in guns and ammo, where guns are the leading cause of deaths for kids, we don’t need to further normalize the sale and promotion of these products.”
Magers said grocery stores and others approached the Texas-based company, which began in 2023, about the idea of selling ammunition through automated technology. The company has one machine in Alabama, four in Oklahoma and one in Texas, with plans for another in Texas and one in Colorado in the coming weeks, he said.
“People I think got shocked when they thought about the idea of selling ammo at a grocery store,” Magers said. “But as we explained, how is that any different than Walmart?”
Federal law requires a person to be 18 to buy shotgun and rifle ammunition and 21 to buy handgun ammunition. Magers said their machines require a purchaser to be at least 21.
The machine works by requiring a customer to scan their driver’s license to validate that they are age 21 or older. The scan also checks that it is a valid license, he said. That is followed by a facial recognition scan to verify “you are who you are saying you are as a consumer,” he said.
“At that point you can complete your transaction of your product and you’re off and going,” he said. “The whole experience takes a minute and a half once you are familiar with the machine.”
The vending machine is another method of sale, joining retail stores and online retailers. A March report by Everytown for Gun Safety found that several major online ammunition retailers did not appear to verify their customers’ ages, despite requirements.
Last year, an online retailer settled a lawsuit brought by families of those killed and injured in a 2018 Texas high school shooting. The families said the 17-year-old shooter was able to buy ammunition from the retailer who failed to verify his age.
Vending machines for bullets or other age-restricted materials is not an entirely new idea. Companies have developed similar technology to sell alcoholic beverages. A company has marketed automated kiosks to sell cannabis products in dispensaries in states where marijuana is legal.
A Pennsylvania police officer created a company about 12 years ago that places bullet-vending machines in private gun clubs and ranges as a convenience for patrons. Those machines do not have the age verification mechanism but are only placed in locations with an age requirement to enter, Master Ammo owner Sam Piccinini said.
Piccinini spoke with a company years ago about incorporating the artificial intelligence technology to verify a purchaser’s age and identity, but at the time it was cost-prohibitive, he said. For American Rounds, one machine had to be removed from a site in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, because of disappointing sales, Magers said.
Magers said much of the early interest for the machines has been in rural communities where there may be few retailers that sell ammunition. The American Rounds machines are in Super C Mart and Fresh Value grocery stores in small cities, including Pell City, Alabama, which has a population over 13,600, and Noble, Oklahoma, where nearly 7,600 people live.
“Someone in that community might have to drive an hour or an hour and a half to get supplied if they want to go hunting, for instance,” Margers said. “Our grocery stores, they wanted to be able to offer their customer another category that they felt like would be popular.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-grocery-stores-add-ammo-to-vending-machines/7693493.html
In swing-state Pennsylvania, Latino-majority city embraces chance to sway 2024 election
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
READING, PA — Religion and politics frequently overlap in Reading, an old industrial city in one of the most pivotal swing states of this year’s presidential election.
In Pennsylvania, there is early precedent for this kind of thing. The state began as a haven for Quakers and other European religious minorities fleeing persecution. That includes the parents of Daniel Boone, the national folk hero born just miles from Reading, a town where the Latino population is now the majority.
Today, the Catholic mayor is also a migrant — and the first Latino to hold the office in Reading’s 276-year history. Mayor Eddie Moran is keenly aware of the pivotal role Pennsylvania could play in the high-stakes race, when a few thousand votes in communities like his could decide the future of the United States.
“Right now, with the growing Latino population and the influx of Latinos moving into cities such as Reading, it’s definitely an opportunity for the Latino vote to change the outcome of an election,” Moran says. “It’s not a secret anymore.”
A community of spirituality — and Latinos
In Reading, the sky is dotted with crosses atop church steeples, one after the other. Catholic church pews fill up on Sundays and many stand for the services. Elsewhere, often in nondescript buildings, evangelical and Pentecostal congregations gather to sing, pray and sometimes speak in tongues.
Outside, salsa, merengue and reggaeton music (often sung in Spanglish) blast from cars and houses along city streets first mapped out by William Penn’s sons — and that now serve a thriving downtown packed with restaurants proudly owned by Latinos.
This is a place where, when the mayor is told that his town is 65% Latino, he takes pride in saying: “It’s more like 70%.”
They believe in their political sway. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2022 found that eight in 10 Latino registered voters say their vote can affect the country’s direction at least “some.”
On a recent Sunday, Luis Hernandez, 65, born in Puerto Rico, knelt to pray near the altar at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church. Later, walking out after Mass, Hernandez said he’ll vote for Trump — even on the very day of the former president’s criminal convictions related to hush money for a porn star.
“Biden is old,” Hernandez says, and then reflects on how Trump is only a few years younger. “Yes, but you look at Trump and you see the difference. … Biden’s a good man. He’s decent. But he’s too old.”
In the weeks after he spoke, many more Americans would join in calls for Biden to withdraw from the race after his debate debacle, which crystallized growing concerns that, at 81, he’s too old.
Immigration is a key topic
It’s not just about Biden’s age or debate performance. It’s also, Hernandez says, about the border crisis. He says too many immigrants are arriving in the United States, including some he considers criminals. And, he adds, so much has changed since his Dominican-born father arrived in the 1960s — when, he says, it was easier to enter and stay in America.
For some, there are other issues as well.
“It’s the economy, immigration and abortion,” says German Vega, 41, a Dominican American who became a U.S. citizen in 2015. Vega, who describes himself as “pro-life,” voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to do so again in November.
“Biden doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and we have a country divided,” Vega says. Trump is “a person of character. … He looks confident. He never gives up; he’s always fighting for what he believes.”
Of course, there are some here who just don’t favor taking sides — except if it’s for Jesus. Listen to Pastor Alex Lopez, a Puerto Rican who cuts hair in a barber shop on the first floor of his home on Saturdays, and preaches on the second floor on Sundays.
“We’re neutral,” he says. “We just believe in God.”
A city with deep industrial roots resurges
Reading was once synonymous with iron and steel. Those industries cemented the creation of the Reading Railroad (an early stop on the Monopoly gameboard) that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution and became, in the late 19th century, one of the country’s major corporations.
Today, the city of about 95,000 people, 65 miles northwest of Philadelphia, has a fast-increasing population. However, it is one of the state’s poorest cities, with a median household income of about $44,000, compared to about $72,000 in Pennsylvania.
Reading is 67% Latino, according to U.S. Census figures, and home to high concentrations of people of Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage — as well as Colombians and Mexicans, who own restaurants and other businesses around town.
Political candidates are taking notice of Reading’s political and economic power. The 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania was decided by about 82,000 votes, and — according to the Pew Research Center — there are more than 600,000 eligible Latino voters in the state.
It’s true that Reading still leans mostly Democratic — Biden crushed Trump in the city by a margin of about 46 percentage points in 2020. However in that election, voting-age turnout in the city (about 35%) was significantly lower than the rest of the state (about 67%).
But the Trump campaign doesn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to turn it around. It recently teamed up with the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania GOP to open a “Latino Americans for Trump” office in a red-brick building near the Democratic mayor’s downtown office.
Moran has made a plea to Biden and other Democrats to take notice and visit Reading before the election. It’s crucial, he says.
“I think that it’s still predominantly Democratic,” he says. “But the candidates need to come out and really explain that to the community.”
One development, Moran says, is that religious leaders are now less hesitant to get involved in politics.
“Things change, even for churches,” he says. Clergy “realize the importance that they hold as faith-based leaders and religious leaders and they’re making a call of action through their congregations.”
The message: Get out and vote
A few blocks from St. Peter’s, a crowd gathers inside First Baptist Church, which dates to the late 19th century.
In a sign of Reading’s changing demographics, the aging and shrinking congregation of white Protestants donated the building to Iglesia Jesucristo es el Rey (Church Jesus Christ is the King), a thriving Latino congregation of some 100 worshippers who have shared the building with First Baptist for nearly a decade.
Pastors Carol Pagan and her husband Jose, both from Puerto Rico, recently led prayer. At the end of the service, microphone in hand, the pastors encourage parishioners to vote in the election — irrespective of who they choose as the president.
“The right to vote is,” Carol Pagan says before her husband chimes in: “a civic responsibility.”
After the service, the congregation descends to the basement, where they share a traditional meal of chicken with rice and beans.
“I believe the principle of human rights have to do with both parties — or any party running,” Carol Pagan says. “I always think of the elderly, of the health system, of health insurance, and how it shouldn’t be so much about capitalism but more rights for all of us to be well.”
Both of the Pagans make clear that they won’t vote for Trump. They’re waiting, like others, for circumstances that might lead Biden to withdraw, so they can support another Democratic candidate.
“It’s our duty to shield that person with prayer — it doesn’t matter if that person is a Democrat or a Republican,” Carol Pagan says. “We owe them that.”
Holocaust orphan finds family, thanks to DNA tests
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Shalom Korai never knew his real name or his birthday. He was saved from the streets of a burning Warsaw neighborhood while he was a toddler during World War II, when the rest of his family was killed by Nazis in Poland.
He grew up and lived in Israel with no idea of his past. He never knew a hug from someone who shared his blood or his DNA — until Wednesday, when Korai walked off an airplane in the U.S. state of South Carolina and into the arms of Ann Meddin Hellman. Her grandfather was the brother of Korai’s grandfather, making them second cousins.
It’s a story that would have been impossible without modern DNA science and without a genetic test that Korai was given by a psychologist who studies children orphaned in the Holocaust.
Hellman’s ancestors came to the United States while Korai’s family stayed behind in Poland to run a family business. Decades later, they would be among the 6 million Jewish men, women and children systematically killed by the Germans in World War II.
“I feel like I’ve given somebody a new life. He’s become my child. I have to protect him and take care of him,” Hellman said, although she is a few years younger than Korai, who is about 83.
She beamed and gave Korai another hug as they waited for his luggage so they could start several days of parties with dozens of other relatives at Hellman’s Charleston home.
Korai, who speaks mostly Hebrew, couldn’t stop smiling even if he didn’t quite understand the hubbub of camera crews and Southern hospitality swirling around him. He and Hellman spoke often since the DNA breakthrough, first in letters and later on video calls several times a week.
As Hellman waited at the end of the jetway, she nervously spoke to her brother and sister. “I can’t wait to get my arms around him,” she said.
What is known of Korai’s story started with him alone. He was on a street in a burning Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1943 when a policeman scooped him up and took him to a convent. Nuns baptized him and started to raise him as a gentile with several other orphaned children.
Lena Kuchler-Silberman, a Jewish woman who was part of the resistance against the Nazis, heard of the children. She saved around 100 Jewish children, sometimes taking them in as she found them abandoned or alone or sometimes negotiating or paying to take them out of non-Jewish orphanages.
Korai was taken to a Jewish boarding school in Poland, then to France and eventually to Israel in 1949. He spent 35 years working on semi-trucks. Korai had three children and eight grandchildren. And he put out of his mind that he would never know his actual birthday, the name given to him at birth, how his father and mother met or what his grandfathers did for a living.
“You can’t start searching for something you know nothing about,” Korai said in Hebrew to the website for MyHeritage, the company whose DNA testing helped find his relatives.
MyHeritage offered Korai and other Holocaust orphans DNA testing in the summer of 2023. A few months later Hellman got a ping from a DNA sample she had given during her extensive research of her family tree. It was an unknown second cousin.
The name and other information was unfamiliar. On a hunch, she asked another cousin to test her DNA. It matched too. Hellman reached out to MyHeritage and requested a photo and other information. She remembers gasping when she saw Korai. He looked just like her brother.
“The picture gave it away,” Hellman said.
The connection instantly fell into place. Hellman knew a branch of her family connected to her great uncle was killed during the Holocaust. Now she knew there was a survivor.
Hellman wasn’t looking for anyone in particular when she took her DNA test, but sometimes wonderful surprises happen, said Daniel Horowitz, an expert genealogist at MyHeritage.
“All this family that he was always praying for came to him just like that,” Horowitz said.
Some mysteries remain, thanks to the Nazi annihilation of people and many records of their existence. Hellman knows the name of Korai’s aunt. “But I haven’t been able to find his parents’ names. That upsets me the most,” she said.
Hellman has learned much about her cousin. He’s shy and quiet. As Korai got off the plane Wednesday along with his travel companion and translator, Arie Bauer, he jokingly asked if he could stand behind Bauer. His friend told him to hug his family.
“It’s slowly dawning on him,” said Bauer. “He’s getting used to, little by little, a brand new family he didn’t know about.”
It wasn’t just Hellman at the airport. More than a dozen other relatives — Hellman’s brother and sister, her husband and sons, a niece, sister-in-law and cousins were there to celebrate. Dozens more were gathered at Hellman’s house for more parties and gatherings.
Korai smiled as each of his relatives hugged him. In quieter moments when they talked among themselves, he looked them over.
“He’ll get to see himself in them in a way he has never gotten to see himself before,” Hellman said. “And we get to give a family to someone who never thought one existed.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/holocaust-orphan-now-has-cousins-thanks-to-dna-tests-/7695064.html
Demand for rare elements used in clean energy could help clean up abandoned coal mines in US
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
MOUNT STORM, West Virginia — Down a long gravel road, tucked into the hills in West Virginia, is a low-slung building where researchers are extracting essential elements from an old coal mine that they hope will strengthen the nation’s energy future.
They aren’t mining the coal that powered the steel mills and locomotives that helped industrialize America — and that is blamed for contributing to global warming.
Rather, researchers are finding that groundwater pouring out of this and other abandoned coal mines contains the rare earth elements and other valuable metals that are vital to making everything from electric vehicle motors to rechargeable batteries to fighter jets smaller, lighter or more powerful.
The pilot project run by West Virginia University is now part of an intensifying worldwide race to develop a secure supply of the valuable metals and, with more federal funding, it could grow to a commercial scale enterprise.
“The ultimate irony is that the stuff that has created climate change is now a solution, if we’re smart about it,” said John Quigley, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The technology that has been piloted at this facility in West Virginia could also pioneer a way to clean up vast amounts of coal mine drainage that poisons waterways across Appalachia.
The project is one of the leading efforts by the federal government as it injects more money than ever into recovering rare earth elements to expand renewable energies and fight climate change by reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
For the U.S., which like the rest of the West is beholden to a Chinese-controlled supply of these valuable metals, the pursuit of rare earth elements is also a national security priority.
Those involved, meanwhile, hope their efforts can bring jobs in clean energy to dying coal towns and clean up entrenched coal pollution that has hung around for decades.
In Pennsylvania alone, drainage from coal piles and abandoned mines has turned waterways red from iron ore and turquoise from aluminum, killing life in more than 8,000 kilometers of streams. Federal statistics also show about 1,200 square kilometers of abandoned and unreclaimed coal mine lands host more than 200 million tons of coal waste.
The metals that chemists are working to extract from mine drainage here are lightweight, powerfully magnetized and have superior fluorescent and conductive properties.
One aim of the Department of Energy is to fund research that proves to private companies that the concepts are commercially viable and profitable enough for them to invest their own money.
Hundreds of millions of dollars from President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law is accelerating the effort.
Department officials hope that by the middle of the 2030s this infusion will have spawned full-fledged commercial enterprises.
The two most advanced projects funded by the department are the one in West Virginia treating mine drainage and another processing coal dug up by lignite mining in North Dakota.
The first could be an important source of a number of critical metals, such as yttrium, neodymium and gadolinium, used in catalysts and magnets. The latter could be a major source of germanium and gallium, used in semiconductors, LEDs, electrical transmission components, solar panels and electric vehicle motors.
Researchers at each site are designing a commercial-scale operation, based on their pilot projects, in hopes of landing a massive federal grant to build it out.
The alternative would be to develop new mines, disturb more land, get permits, hire workers, build roads and connect power supplies, tasks that take years.
“With acid mind drainage, that’s already done for you,” said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the Water Research Institute at West Virginia University.
Ziemkiewicz began the mine drainage project almost a decade ago, helped by federal subsidies. He had envisioned it as a way to treat runoff, recover critical minerals and raise money for more mine cleanups in West Virginia.
But the Biden administration’s ambitious funding for clean energy and a domestic supply of critical minerals broadened that goal.
At the facility, drainage from a one-time coal mine — now closed and covered by a grassy slope — emerges from two pipes, and dumps about 3,028 liters per minute into a retention pond.
From there the water is routed through massive indoor pools and a series of large tanks that, with the help of lime to lower the acidity, separate out most of the silicate, iron and aluminum. That produces a pale powdery concentrate that is about 95% rare earth oxides, plus water clean enough to return to a nearby creek.
The Department of Energy is funding research on coal wastes in various states.
“There are literally billions of tons of coal ash and coal waste lying around, across the country. And so if we can go back in and remine those, there’s decades worth of materials there,” said Grant Bromhal, the acting director of the Department of Energy’s Division of Minerals Sustainability.
Not only coal, but old copper and phosphate mines also hold potential, Bromhal said.
The country won’t be able to recover metals from all of them right away, but technologies the department is helping develop can satisfy a substantial part of demand in the next 20 to 30 years, Bromhal said.
“So if we get into the tens of percents or 50%, I think that’s in the realm of possibility,” he said.
Other solutions to obtain more of these metals are retrieving them from discarded devices and shifting sourcing to friendly nations and away from geopolitical rivals or unstable countries, analysts say. For now, there is only a handful of critical or rare earth mineral mines in the United States, although many more are being proposed.
One final subsidy will be required from the federal government: buy the reclaimed metals at a price that guarantees a commercially viable operation, Ziemkiewicz said.
That way China can’t simply buy up the product or use its market dominance to drive down prices and scare away private investors, he said.
Quigley, a former environmental protection secretary of Pennsylvania and a one-time small-city mayor in coal country, hopes to see a facility like Ziemkiewicz’s come to the Jeddo mine tunnel system in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The Jeddo has defied decades of efforts to treat its flow, which drains a vast network of abandoned underground mines.
It is a massive source of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, producing an estimated 114,000 to 151,000 liters per minute.
Bringing the Little Nescopeck Creek back to life could put people to work cleaning up the stream and creating recreational opportunities from a newly revived waterway, Quigley said.
“This could mean a lot to coal communities, to a lot of people in the coal region,” Quigley said. “And to the country.”
July 17: Hart Governing Board Regular Meeting
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The regular meeting of the William S. Hart Union High School District’s Governing Board will be held Wednesday, June 5, beginning with closed session at 6 p.m., followed immediately by the public session at 7 p.m
https://scvnews.com/july-17-hart-governing-board-regular-meeting/
July 16: Planning Commission Public Hearing on Speedway Property
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Santa Clarita Planning Commission will hold its regular meeting Tuesday, July 16, at 6 p.m., in City Hall’s Council Chambers to hold a public hearing on the development proposal for the Riverview project, which is slated for the Saugus Speedway property
https://scvnews.com/july-16-planning-commission-public-hearing-for-saugus-speedway-property/
Santa Clarita Spotlight to Highlight Fitness
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita, in partnership with SCVTV, has released the fourth episode of “Santa Clarita Spotlight,” a Shop Local series dedicated to promoting and celebrating the diverse range of local businesses within the city. If you’re looking to shake up your workout routine tune in to the latest episode
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-spotlight-to-highlight-fitness/
Free Summer Sunset Concerts at Valencia Marketplace
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Valencia Marketplace’s annual free summer concerts will be held Friday evenings 6-8 p.m.
https://scvnews.com/free-summer-sunset-concerts-at-valencia-marketplace/
NATO Summit concludes with security guarantees for Ukraine
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
The NATO alliance completed its annual summit this week in Washington, celebrating its 75th anniversary and making long-term commitments of military support for Ukraine. It promised the country’s future is in NATO, while calling out China, Iran and North Korea for enabling Russian belligerence. Jeff Custer reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/nato-summit-concludes-with-security-guarantees-for-ukraine/7696456.html
Iran’s Pezeshkian rejects US pressure, praises Russia, China
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States should realize that Iran will not respond to pressure, President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian said in a statement published Saturday, in which he also highlighted his country’s friendship with China and Russia.
Pezeshkian, a relative moderate who beat a hardline rival in elections, also reiterated that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, adding that Tehran would expand ties with neighbors and engage with Europe.
“The United States … needs to recognize the reality and understand, once and for all, that Iran does not — and will not — respond to pressure (and) that Iran’s defense doctrine does not include nuclear weapons,” Pezeshkian said in the statement, titled “My message to the new world” and published in the daily Tehran Times.
Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old heart surgeon, has pledged to promote a pragmatic foreign policy, ease tensions over now-stalled negotiations with major powers to revive a 2015 nuclear pact and improve prospects for social liberalization and political pluralism.
However, many Iranians are skeptical about his ability to fulfill his campaign promises as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not the president, is the ultimate authority in the Islamic Republic.
“China and Russia have consistently stood by us during challenging times. We deeply value this friendship,” Pezeshkian said.
“Russia is a valued strategic ally and neighbor to Iran and my administration will remain committed to expanding and enhancing our cooperation,” he said, adding that Tehran would actively support initiatives aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine.
“The Iranian people have entrusted me with a strong mandate to vigorously pursue constructive engagement on the international stage while insisting on our rights, our dignity and our deserved role in the region and the world.
“I extend an open invitation to those willing to join us in this historic endeavor,” Pezeshkian said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-s-pezeshkian-rejects-us-pressure-praises-russia-china-/7696461.html
NASA Cloud-Based Platform Could Help Streamline, Improve Air Traffic
date: 2024-07-13, from: NASA breaking news
Just like your smartphone navigation app can instantly analyze information from many sources to suggest the best route to follow, a NASA-developed resource is now making data available to help the aviation industry do the same thing. To assist air traffic managers in keeping airplanes moving efficiently through the skies, information about weather, potential delays, […]
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/digital-information-platform-could-help-improve-air-traffic/
Garcia supports House passage of election security bill
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
News release Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, voted in favor of H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which passed the House. This bill would better ensure […]
The post Garcia supports House passage of election security bill appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/garcia-supports-house-passage-of-election-security-bill/
16 Schiavo bills advance
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
News release Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, announced that 16 bills in her legislative package have advanced, with five bills moving onto the Senate floor, many with bipartisan support. Additionally, […]
The post 16 Schiavo bills advance appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/16-schiavo-bills-advance/
City OK’s Formal Plan to Take Over Hart Park
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
With a 5-0 vote Tuesday night, the Santa Clarita City Council unanimously approved an agreement with the County of Los Angeles to transfer ownership of William S. Hart Park to the city
https://scvnews.com/city-approves-hart-park-plan/
West Ranch graduate awarded prestigious scholarship
date: 2024-07-13, from: The Signal
For West Ranch High School graduate Brennan T. Leem, pursuing high achievements is nothing out of the ordinary. The 18-year-old was recently awarded a National Merit Scholarship and said the award […]
The post West Ranch graduate awarded prestigious scholarship appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/west-ranch-graduate-awarded-prestigious-scholarship/
Oct. 12: Child & Family Center Purple Walk Domestic Violence Awareness 5K
date: 2024-07-13, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Child & Family Center will present its annual Purple Walk Domestic Violence Awareness 5K on Saturday, Oct. 12 from 8-11 a.m
https://scvnews.com/oct-12-child-family-center-purple-walk-domestic-violence-awareness-5k/
Judge dismisses involuntary manslaughter case against actor Baldwin
date: 2024-07-13, from: VOA News USA
SANTA FE, New Mexico — A New Mexico judge brought a sudden, stunning end Friday to the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin, dismissing it in the middle of the actor’s trial.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case with prejudice - meaning it cannot be filed again - based on the misconduct of police and prosecutors. She said evidence in the shooting in 2021 of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust” had been withheld from the defense
Baldwin cried, hugged his two attorneys, gestured to the front of the court, then turned to hug his crying wife, Hilaria. He climbed into an SUV outside the Santa Fe courthouse without speaking to reporters.
Baldwin, 66, could have been sentenced to 18 months in prison if convicted.
“The late discovery of this evidence during trial has impeded the effective use of evidence in such a way that it has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” Marlowe Sommer said. “If this conduct does not rise to the level of bad faith, it certainly comes so near to bad faith to show signs of scorching.”
Marlowe Sommer had paused the trial earlier Friday while she considered the defense motion to dismiss the case over the withheld evidence.
The defense argued that prosecutors had hidden evidence about ammunition that might have been related to the shooting. Defense attorneys said they should have had the ability to determine the importance of the evidence.
The prosecution said that the ammunition was not connected to the case and had not been hidden.
The issue emerged Thursday on the second day of the actor’s trial during defense questioning of sheriff’s crime scene technician Marissa Poppell. Baldwin attorney Alex Spiro asked whether a “good Samaritan” had come into the sheriff’s office with the ammunition earlier this year after the trial of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armorer, for her role in Hutchins’ death. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison on an involuntary manslaughter conviction, which she is now appealing.
Baldwin’s legal team said the Santa Fe sheriff’s office took possession of the live rounds as evidence in the case but failed to list them in the “Rust” investigation file or disclose their existence to defense attorneys.
They also alleged the rounds were evidence that the bullet that killed Hutchins came from Seth Kenney, the movie’s prop supplier. Kenney has denied supplying live ammunition to the production and has not been charged in the case.
“The state’s withholding of the evidence was willful and deliberate,” Marlowe Sommer said in delivering her decision. “Dismissal with prejudice is warranted to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and the efficient administration of justice.”
Erlinda Johnson, one of the state prosecutors, had resigned from the case earlier Friday.
Car dealer software slinger CDK Global said to have paid $25M ransom after cyberattack
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
15K dealerships take estimated $600M+ hit
CDK Global reportedly paid a $25 million ransom in Bitcoin after its servers were knocked offline by crippling ransomware.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/cdk_ransom_payout/
US lawmakers rally for Lai’s release amid Hong Kong repression
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
washington — A top U.S. House member has pledged to work with a coalition of rights groups to be a special advocate for Jimmy Lai, the founder of Hong Kong Next Media, and is urging the Hong Kong government to release Lai from prison as soon as possible.
Lai and his newspaper, Apple Daily, which has been out of operation for three years, supported Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy movement that was later crushed by China’s national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong.
Lai, a British citizen, was arrested on fraud charges in August 2020. He has been in prison and denied bail since December 2020. He also faces charges under Hong Kong’s national security law of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to publish incitement.”
Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, will advocate for Lai through the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s Defending Freedoms Project, he announced in a statement first reported by VOA’s Mandarin Service.
“The Chinese Communist Party — like other authoritarian regimes — abuses government power by suppressing and persecuting dissent,” Raskin said in a statement to VOA. “Jimmy Lai’s detention underscores how the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] silences critics to exert power over Hong Kong. I’m proud to sponsor Mr. Lai and demand that the CCP immediately release him and stop attacking pro-democracy advocates.”
No immunity
In a statement in February, the Hong Kong government responded to critics of the Lai case.
“The suggestion that certain individuals or groups should be immune from legal consequences for their illegal acts is no different from advocating a special pass to break the law, and this totally runs contrary to the spirit of the rule of law,” the statement read, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
The Lantos commission launched the Defending Freedoms Project (DFP) in December 2012, collaborating with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Amnesty International USA. It has since expanded to include Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, Freedom Now, Scholars at Risk, PEN America and the Senate Human Rights Caucus.
According to DFP, members of Congress sponsoring a prisoner receive a detailed toolkit for advocacy, which includes writing letters to prisoners and their families, giving speeches and publishing op-eds. They can also initiate legislative actions, hold discussions or hearings, and petition executive departments like the State Department and the White House for support.
By taking on a case, lawmakers can help secure releases, reduce sentences, improve prison conditions and raise awareness of unjust laws.
According to Raskin, Lai was arrested for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party through his work as a publisher and pro-democracy advocate.
“At 76 years of age, Lai has been held in prolonged solitary confinement since December 2020, for entirely peaceful conduct, in exercise of his fundamental freedoms. His age and diabetes diagnosis raise serious concerns about his physical well-being. He faces a potential life sentence under the NSL, depending upon the outcome of his current trial,” Raskin said in the statement.
Freedom House applauded the representative for advocating on behalf of Lai and commended his efforts.
“We thank Congressman Raskin for serving as Mr. Lai’s advocate, and we will continue to call for the immediate release of Mr. Lai and all Hong Kong’s political prisoners,” Annie Boyajian, vice president of policy and advocacy at Freedom House, said in a written statement to VOA.
‘Beijing fears truth tellers’
According to Boyajian, Freedom House is proud to serve as an official partner of the Defending Freedoms Project and to advocate for the release of political prisoners around the world, including Lai.
“Mr. Lai is guilty of nothing more than attempting to exercise and protect fundamental rights in Hong Kong. His imprisonment and the trumped-up charges against him are evidence of just how much Beijing fears truth tellers,” Boyajian said.
According to Raskin, Lai is being prosecuted under the controversial NSL for his journalism and his pro-democracy activities, in clear violation of his rights to freedom of expression and to a fair trial.
Since Beijing implemented Hong Kong’s NSL in 2020, U.S. lawmakers from both parties have increasingly voiced concerns about Hong Kong’s diminishing autonomy and are seeking additional measures to pressure its government.
In March, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the “Maintenance of National Security Ordinance,” derived from Article 23 of the basic law, targeting treason, sedition, espionage and foreign interference. Violators face life imprisonment.
These legislative actions have also raised concerns within the U.S. executive branch and Congress about the further erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong.
The White House informed Congress on July 10 that the national emergency regarding Hong Kong would remain in effect after July 14 this year. The Trump administration declared the situation in Hong Kong a national emergency by executive order on July 14, 2020, and the Biden administration has upheld this order since taking office. As a result, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will continue to require that all goods originating in Hong Kong be marked with “China” as the country of origin.
Hong Kong fires back
The Hong Kong special administrative region government immediately responded Thursday, condemning and opposing the U.S. decision. They accused the U.S. government of using the national emergency to politicize human rights issues, disregard the rule of law and slander Hong Kong’s implementation of the national security law.
Other U.S. House members expressed support for Lai through introduction of a bill in April to rename a section of the street in front of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in downtown Washington as “Jimmy Lai Way.”
There has been no progress since the bill was introduced in April by New Jersey Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), and Representative Tom Suozzi from New York.
Additionally, in January, Smith and U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, respectively the chair and co-chair of the CECC, announced the nominations of Lai, Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi and Ilham Tohti for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
The letter sent to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee highlighted that all four individuals were being arbitrarily detained by Chinese authorities and sentenced to life or long prison terms for exercising their rights guaranteed by international law.
July 21: Placerita Canyon Community Nature Education Series
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The Placerita Canyon Nature Center Associates will present the monthly Community Nature Education Series program on Sunday, July 21 at 2 p.m
https://scvnews.com/july-21-placerita-canyon-community-nature-education-series/
UCSB Italian Studies Department Hosts Italian Consulate
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Consul General Rafaella Valentini speaks at the Cabrillo Pavilion.
The post UCSB Italian Studies Department Hosts Italian Consulate appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/12/ucsb-italian-studies-department-hosts-italian-consulate/
🥸 #207 - That’s What THEY Want You To Think
date: 2024-07-12, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
Who controls the British Crown? Who keeps the Metric System down?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/207-thats-what-they-want-you-to-think
Scriptnotes, Episode 645: The Third Season, Transcript
date: 2024-07-12, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you’re listening to Episode 645 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. For showrunners, the first season of a television show is often a trial by fire as […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 645: The Third Season, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-645-the-third-season-transcript
Old Town Goleta Changes Its Stripes
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Hollister Avenue switches to single lane of traffic in each direction and back-in diagonal parking on the north side of the street.
The post Old Town Goleta Changes Its Stripes appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/12/old-town-goleta-changes-its-stripes/
Art of the Open Door/Gallery
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
‘The New Art Salon: Arte del Pueblo!’ filling the walls of Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, is an unusually juror-free all-are-welcome group show.
The post Art of the Open Door/Gallery appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/12/art-of-the-open-door-gallery/
Visitor Parking at City Hall Relocated
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
A portion of the parking lot at Santa Clarita City Hall is closed due to the installation of solar panels to enhance energy efficiency.
https://scvnews.com/visitor-parking-at-city-hall-relocated/
Scriptnotes, Episode 644: The Power of the Cold Open, Transcript
date: 2024-07-12, from: John August blog
The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: Meow. My name is Craig Mazin. John: This is Episode 644 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we will sing the praises […] The post Scriptnotes, Episode 644: The Power of the Cold Open, Transcript first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-644-the-power-of-the-cold-open-transcript
Windows NT 4.0 ported to run on certain Apple PowerPC Macs
date: 2024-07-12, from: OS News
The most fascinating time for Windows NT were its first few years on the market, when the brand new operating system supported a wide variety of architectures, from default x86, all the way down to stuff like Alpha, MIPS, and exotic things like Intel i860, and even weirder stuff like Clipper (even a SPARC port was planned, but never released). One of the more conventional architectures that saw a Windows NT port – one that was actually released to the public, no less – was PowerPC. The last version of Windows NT to support exotic architectures was 4.0, with Windows 2000 only supporting x86, dropping everything else, including PowerPC (although Windows 2000 for Alpha reached RC1 status). The PowerPC version of Windows NT only supported IBM and Motorola systems using the PowerPC Reference Platform, and never the vastly more popular PowerPC systems from Apple. Well, it’s 2024, and that just changed: Windows NT 4.0 can now be installed and run on certain Apple New World Power Macintosh systems. This repository currently contains the source code for the ARC firmware and its loader, targeting New World Power Macintosh systems using the Gossamer architecture (that is, MPC106 “Grackle” memory controller and PCI host, and “Heathrow” or “Paddington” super-I/O chip on the PCI bus). NT4 only, currently. NT 3.51 may become compatible if HAL and drivers get ported to it. NT 3.5 will never be compatible, as it only supports PowerPC 601. (The additional suspend/hibernation features in NT 3.51 PMZ could be made compatible in theory but in practise would require all of the additional drivers for that to be reimplemented.) ↫ maciNTosh GitHub page This is absolutely wild, and one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen in a long, long time. The deeply experimental nature of this effort does mean that NT 4.0 is definitely not stable on any of the currently supported machines, and the number of drivers implemented is the absolute bare minimum to run NT 4.0 on these systems. It does, however, support dual-booting both NT 4.0 and Mac OS8, 9, and X, which would be quite something to set up. I’m not definitely going to keep an eye on eBay for a supported machine, because running NT on anything other than x86 has always been a bit of a weird fascination for me. Sadly, period-correct PowerPC machines that support NT are extremely rare and thus insanely expensive, and will often require board-level repairs that I can’t perform. Getting a more recent Yikes PowerMac G4 should be easy, since those just materialise out of thin air randomly in the world. I’m incredibly excited about this.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140227/windows-nt-4-0-ported-to-run-on-certain-apple-powerpc-macs/
Transferring Google Photos
date: 2024-07-12, from: Michael Tsai
Data Transfer Project: Beginning today, Apple and Google are expanding on their direct data transfer offerings to allow users of Google Photos to transfer their collections directly to iCloud Photos. This complements and completes the existing transfers that were first made possible from iCloud Photos to Google Photos and fulfills a core Data Transfer Initiative […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/12/transferring-google-photos/
Delta 1.6 Rejected From the App Store
date: 2024-07-12, from: Michael Tsai
Zac Hall: We knew the retro game emulator app Delta was popular, but over 10 million users on iPhone alone? That’s the stat that the team behind Delta shared today alongside the latest news about availability on iPad. […] Delta for iPad comes with features exclusive to iPadOS, including support for Handoff from iPhone, opening […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/12/delta-1-6-rejected-from-the-app-store/
HTTP Status Codes As Area Codes
date: 2024-07-12, from: Michael Tsai
httpareacodes (via Mark Christian): Things that are three digits? HTTP response headers. Area codes. […] 301: Moved Permanently: Western Maryland
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/12/http-status-codes-as-area-codes/
Huge AT&T Data Breach
date: 2024-07-12, from: Michael Tsai
Zack Whittaker ( Hacker News): U.S. phone giant AT&T confirmed Friday it will begin notifying millions of consumers about a fresh data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.In a statement, AT&T said that the stolen data contains phone numbers of both […]
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/07/12/huge-att-data-breach/
The Real System Requirements for Apple’s 2024 Operating Systems
date: 2024-07-12, from: TidBITS blog
Apple’s upcoming operating systems have good historical hardware support, but devils dance in the details. Two MacBook Airs, three iPads, and three Apple Watches fall by the wayside this year. Older devices that are generally compatible won’t be able to take advantage of all the new features. Read on to find out what your devices will support.
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/12/the-real-system-requirements-for-apples-2024-operating-systems/
Package AmigaOS software for Linux and Windows with AxRuntime
date: 2024-07-12, from: OS News
This solution lets developers compile their Amiga API-based applications as Linux binaries. Once the features are implemented, tested and optimized using the runtime on Linux or Windows, developers re-compile their applications for their Amiga-like system of choice and perform final quality checking. Applications created with AxRuntime can be distributed to Linux or Windows communities, giving developers a much broader user base and a possibility to invite developers from outside general Amiga community to contribute to the application. ↫ AxRuntime website I had never considered this as an option, but with AmigaOS 3.x basically being frozen in time, it’s a relatively easy target for an effort such as this. It won’t surprise you to learnt hat AxRuntime is using code from AROS, which itself is fully compatible with AmigaOS 3.1. This should technically mean that any AmigaOS application that runs on AROS should be able to be made to run using this runtime, which is great news for Amiga developers. Why? Well, the cold, harsh truth is that the number of Amiga users is probably still dwindling as the sands of time cause people to, well, die, and the influx of new users, who also happen to possess the skillset to develop AmigaOS software, must be a very, very slow trickle, at best. This runtime will allow AmigaOS developer to package their software to run on Linux and Windows machines, getting a lot more eyes on the software in the process. Amiga devices are not exactly cheap or easy to come by, so this is a great alternative.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140225/package-amigaos-software-for-linux-and-windows-with-axruntime/
Santa Clarita 2024 Public Opinion Poll Highlights
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
The city of Santa Clarita has shared the results of the 2024 Public Opinion Poll. Results reveal high levels of community satisfaction and highlight the key issues that matter most to residents.
https://scvnews.com/santa-clarita-2024-public-opinion-poll-highlights/
Update: New Evacuations Ordered Friday After Lake Fire Burns Half of 6,000-Acre Sedgwick Reserve in Santa Ynez Valley
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
The fire has grown to more than 36,700 acres, threatening the nature preserve’s historic structures and research projects.
The post Update: New Evacuations Ordered Friday After Lake Fire Burns Half of 6,000-Acre Sedgwick Reserve in Santa Ynez Valley appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Sols 4241–4242: We Can’t Go Around It…We’ve Got To Go Through It!
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 10, 2024 Curiosity is currently trekking across Gediz Vallis channel because, as my nephew’s favorite book says, if we can’t go around it… we’ve got to go through it! Recently we’ve been parked for a while on the channel to drill “Mammoth Lakes,” (https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4222-4224-a-particularly-prickly-power-puzzle/) and are now on the move […]
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4241-4242-we-cant-go-around-itweve-got-to-go-through-it/
Santa Clarita’s 2024 Public Opinion Poll Highlights
date: 2024-07-12, from: City of Santa Clarita
The City of Santa Clarita is pleased to share the results of the 2024 Public Opinion Poll. They reveal high levels of community satisfaction and highlight the key issues that matter most to residents. This scientific survey is conducted every two years and offers invaluable insights that guide the City’s strategic planning and decision-making processes. […]
The post Santa Clarita’s 2024 Public Opinion Poll Highlights appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/07/12/santa-claritas-2024-public-opinion-poll-highlights/
Former US ambassador discusses NATO summit
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
https://www.voanews.com/a/former-us-ambassador-discusses-nato-summit-/7695900.html
This Week in the IndieWeb
date: 2024-07-12, from: This week in Indie Web
July 5-12, 2024
Recent Events
From events.indieweb.org/archive:
Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.
Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
Upcoming Events
From events.indieweb.org:
Front End Study Hall is an HTML + CSS focused group meeting, held on Zoom to learn from each other about how to make code do what we want.
Come prepared to teach and learn!
Join us online in Zoom for demos of personal sites, recent breakthroughs, discussions about the independent web, and meet IndieWeb community members! Homebrew Website club is for all levels and areas of IndieWeb interest, whether curious, creative, a coder, or all the above.
- NÜRNBERG, Bayern: LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation
HWC Nuremberg is a in-person meeting for everybody who is interested in setting up a personal website and talk about web-related issues.
- PORTLAND, Oregon: TBD
A one day IndieWebCamp Portland 2024 is planned for August 25th, the day after the XOXO conference and festival, pending confirmation of a venue! If you’re in Portland and have a suggested venue please get in touch via the IndieWeb chat!
New Community Members
From IndieWeb Wiki: New User Pages:
User:Dustin.boston
Created by Dustin.boston on Saturday and edited 1 more time
User:Uxbrad.com
Created by Uxbrad.com on Wednesday
User:Jan.boddez.net
Created by Jan.boddez.net on Monday
Top New Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
marketing
marketing is, from a positive perspective, the work you can do to make it super easy for others (bloggers, journalists, etc) to write about your site, specific posts, projects, events, services, and even products, by doing things like creating easy to re-use icons for yourself and your site, featured images for posts, copy pasteable links, logos, and short/medium/long descriptions of your things, and easy to find guides.
Created by [tantek] on Wednesday with 2 more edits by loqi.me and paulrobertlloyd.com
h-feed validator
Closest thing we currently have to an h-feed validator is the Preview tool in Monocle, which will accept the URL of your h-feed, parse it, and the display a minimally styled visual feed of what it found, which you can use to verify your feed name, and the entries in your feed with author information, article names if any, HTML or plain text content, and date-times published linked to entry permalinks.
Created by Tantek.com on Saturday and edited 1 more time
New Event Notes
From IndieWeb Wiki: New Pages:
Homebrew Website Club - Pacific: 2024-07-03
Homebrew Website Club (Global Edition): 2024-07-11
Homebrew Website Club Europe/London: 2024-07-10
Top Edited Wiki Pages
From IndieWeb Wiki: Recent Changes:
- curly quotes 7 edits by tantek.com, loqi.me, and vanderven.se martijn
- curated comments 4 edits by tantek.com and loqi.me
- maps 3 edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
- blogroll 3 edits by zacharykai.net and tantek.com
- large language model 2 edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
- press-kit 2 edits by tantek.com
- health-and-safety 2 edits by gregorlove.com
- footnote 2 edits by tantek.com and loqi.me
- UTF-8 2 edits by loqi.me and tantek.com
https://indieweb.org/this-week/2024-07-12.html
Santa Clarita Spotlight to Highlight Fitness
date: 2024-07-12, from: City of Santa Clarita
City of Santa Clarita and SCVTV Release Fourth Episode of Santa Clarita Spotlight The City of Santa Clarita, in partnership with SCVTV, is excited to release the fourth episode of “Santa Clarita Spotlight,” a Shop Local series dedicated to promoting and celebrating the diverse range of local businesses within the City. If you’re looking to […]
The post Santa Clarita Spotlight to Highlight Fitness appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/07/12/santa-clarita-spotlight-to-highlight-fitness/
Google is ending support for Lacros, the experimental version of Chrome for ChromeOS
date: 2024-07-12, from: OS News
Back in August 2023, we previewed our work on an experimental version of Chrome browser for ChromeOS named Lacros. The original intention was to allow Chrome browser on Chromebooks to swiftly get the latest feature and security updates without needing a full OS update. As we refocus our efforts on achieving similar objectives with ChromeOS embracing portions of the Android stack, we have decided to end support for this experiment. We believe this will be a more effective way to help accelerate the pace of innovation on Chromebook. ↫ ChromeOS Beta Tester Community To refresh your memory, Lacros was an attempt by Google to decouple the Chrome browser from ChromeOS itself, so that the browser could be updated indepdnently from ChromeOS as a whole. This would obviously bring quite a few benefits with it, from faster and easier updates, to the ability to keep updating the Chrome browser after device support has ended. This was always an experimental feature, so the end of this experiment really won’t be affecting many people. The interesting part is the reference to the recent announcement that ChromeOS’ Linux kernel and various subsystems will be replaced by their Android counterparts. I’m not entirely sure what this means for the Chrome browser on ChromeOS, since it seems unlikely that they’re going to be using the Android version of Chrome on ChromeOS. It’s generally impossible to read the tea leaves when it comes to whatever Google does, so I’m not even going to try.
NASA to Commemorate 55th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
As the agency explores more of the Moon than ever before under the Artemis campaign, NASA will celebrate the 55th anniversary of the first astronauts landing on the Moon through a variety of in-person, virtual, and engagement activities nationwide between Monday, July 15, and Thursday, July 25. Events will honor America’s vision and technology that […]
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-to-commemorate-55th-anniversary-of-apollo-11-moon-landing/
Lompoc Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Smuggling Fentanyl into Jail That Killed Fellow Inmate
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Kaelen Jacobkeali Wendel, 32, was found guilty in March of distribution of fentanyl resulting in death and serious bodily injury.
The post Lompoc Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Smuggling Fentanyl into Jail That Killed Fellow Inmate appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Fire Extinguished at Rouen Cathedral, a Frequent Subject of Monet’s Paintings
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The 12th-century structure and the artworks inside it sustained no significant damage
Nuevo Patrón de Tráfico en Hollister Avenue en Old Town
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, 11 de Julio, 2024 – Hay un nuevo patrón de tráfico en Old Town a lo largo de
The post Nuevo Patrón de Tráfico en Hollister Avenue en Old Town appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/12/nuevo-patron-de-trafico-en-hollister-avenue-en-old-town/
New Traffic Pattern on Hollister Avenue in Old Town
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
GOLETA, CA, July 12, 2024 – There is a new traffic pattern in Old Town along Hollister Avenue. Fairview Avenue to
The post New Traffic Pattern on Hollister Avenue in Old Town appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
https://www.independent.com/2024/07/12/new-traffic-pattern-on-hollister-avenue-in-old-town/
Friday Links: July 12, 2024
date: 2024-07-12, from: California Native Plants Society
Learn about ancient oaks, tribal cultural burns, resilient plants, climate impacts, and more in CNPS’s first Friday Links blog.
The post Friday Links: July 12, 2024 appeared first on California Native Plant Society.
https://www.cnps.org/friday-links/friday-links-july-12-2024-39114
“GitHub” Is Starting to Feel Like Legacy Software
date: 2024-07-12, from: Tilde.news
Is Sodium-Ion the Next Big Battery?
date: 2024-07-12, from: Heatmap News
In the weird, wide world of energy storage, lithium-ion batteries may appear to be an unshakeably dominant technology. Costs have declined about 97% over the past three decades, grid-scale battery storage is forecast to grow faster than wind or solar in the U.S. in the coming decade, and the global lithium-ion supply chain is far outpacing demand, according to BloombergNEF.
That supply chain, however, is dominated by Chinese manufacturing. According to the International Energy Agency, China controls well over half the world’s lithium processing, nearly 85% of global battery cell production capacity, and the lion’s share of actual lithium-ion battery production. Any country creating products using lithium-ion batteries, including the U.S., is at this point dependent on Chinese imports.
This has, understandably, sent U.S. manufactures searching for alternatives, and lately they have struck on one that has the industry all excited: sodium-ion batteries. As global interest ramps up, domestic manufacturers have at least a prayer of building out their own sodium-ion supply chains before China completely takes over. Research and consulting firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence expects to see a 350% jump in announced sodium-ion battery manufacturing capacity this year alone. And while the supply of these batteries is only in the tens of gigawatts today, Benchmark forecasts that it will be in the hundreds of gigawatts by 2030.
Sodium-ion technology itself isn’t particularly disruptive — it’s not new, nor does it serve a new market, exactly. It performs roughly the same as lithium-ion in energy storage systems, providing around four hours of power for either grid-scale or residential applications. But sodium-ion chemistries have a handful of key advantages — perhaps most critically that sodium is significantly more abundant in the U.S. than lithium, and is thus far cheaper. China has unsurprisingly taken an early lead in the sodium-ion market anyway, reportedly opening its first sodium-ion battery storage station in May. But because the industry is still so nascent, domestic manufacturers say there’s still time for them to get in the game.
“We’re focused on catching up to China in lithium-ion batteries, where in our view, we should be leapfrogging to what’s next,” Cam Dales, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Peak Energy, a Bay Area-based sodium-ion battery storage startup, told me. “There’s no CATL of the United States. That’s ultimately our ambition, is to become that.”
As political tensions between China and the U.S. mount, relying on a Chinese-dominated battery supply chain is geopolitically risky. Last month, the Biden administration announced a steep increase in tariffs on a wide array of Chinese imports, including a 25% tariff on lithium-ion non-electric vehicle batteries starting in 2026, and another 25% tariff on battery parts and certain critical minerals starting this year.
Because sodium is so plentiful and cheap, companies in the space estimate that sodium-ion storage systems could eventually be around 40% less expensive than lithium-ion systems, once manufacturing scales. This lower price point could eventually make sodium-ion economically viable for storage applications “up to eight, 10, maybe even 12 hours,” Dales told me.
Sodium-ion also has a leg up on lithium-ion when it comes to safety. While this is an ongoing area of research, so far sodium-ion batteries appear less likely to catch fire, at least in part because of their lower energy density and the fact that their electrolytes generally have a higher flashpoint, the temperature at which the liquid is capable of igniting. This could make them safer to install indoors or pack close together. It’s also possible to discharge sodium-ion batteries down to zero volts, completely eliminating the possibility of battery fires during transit, whereas lithium-ion can’t be completely discharged without ruining the battery. Finally, sodium-ion performs better in the cold than lithium-ion batteries, which notoriously struggle to charge and discharge as efficiently at low temperatures.
“When we saw announcements coming out of China about very large investments in large capacity sodium projects, that was really an eye opener for us,” Dales told me. He and co-founder Landon Mossburg launched Peak Energy last year with $10 million in funding. The company is currently importing sodium-ion cells and assembling battery packs domestically, but by 2027, Dales said he hopes to produce both cells and packs in the U.S., with an eye toward opening a gigafactory and onshoring the entirety of the supply chain.
He’s not alone in this ambition. Natron Energy, another Silicon Valley-based sodium-ion company, has been at this for more than a decade. The startup, founded in 2012, recently opened the first commercial-scale sodium-ion battery manufacturing facility in the U.S. When fully ramped, the plant will have the capacity to produce 600 megawatts of batteries annually, paving the way for future gigawatt-scale facilities.
It cost Natron over $40 million to upgrade the Michigan-based plant, which formerly produced lithium-ion batteries, into a sodium-ion facility, and while the first shipments were expected to begin in June, none have yet been announced. The company’s backers include Khosla Ventures as well as strategic investors such as Chevron, which is interested in using this tech at EV charging stations; United Airlines, which hopes to use it for charging motorized ground equipment; and Nabor Industries, one of the world’s largest oil and gas drilling companies, which is interested in using sodium-ion batteries to power drilling rigs. It also received nearly $20 million from ARPA-E to fund the conversion of the Michigan facility.
Beyond the U.S. and China, France-based sodium-ion cell developer Tiamat is planning to build out a massive 5-gigawatt facility, while Sweden-based Northvolt and UK-based Faradion are also hoping to bring sodium-ion battery manufacturing to the European market.
Sodium-ion isn’t a magic bullet technology, though, and it certainly won’t make sense for all applications. The main reason there hasn’t been much interest up until now is because these batteries are about 30% less energy-dense than their lithium-ion counterparts. That likely doesn’t matter too much for grid-scale or even residential storage systems, where there’s usually enough open land, garage, or exterior wall space to install a sufficiently-sized system. But it is the reason why sodium-ion wasn’t commercialized sooner, as lithium-ion’s space efficiency is better suited to the portable electronics and electric vehicle markets.
“It’s only in the last two years probably, that the stationary storage market has gotten big enough where it alone can drive specific chemistries and the investment required to scale them,” Dales told me.
Catherine Peake, an analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, also told me that lithium iron phosphate batteries — the specific flavor of lithium-ion that’s generally favored for energy storage systems — usually have a longer cycle life than sodium-ion batteries, meaning they can charge and discharge more times before performance degrades. “That cycle life is actually a pretty key metric for [energy storage system] applications,” she said, though she acknowledged that Natron is an outlier in this regard, as the company claims to have a longer cycle life than standard lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium is also a volatile market. Though prices have bottomed out recently, less than two years ago the world was facing the opposite scenario, as China saw the price for battery-grade lithium carbonate hit an all-time high, Kevin Shang, a senior research analyst at the energy consultancy WoodMackenzie, told me. “So this catalyzed a soaring interest in sodium-ion batteries,” he said.
Although Shang and Peake agree that the U.S. could seize this moment to build a domestic sodium-ion supply chain, both also said that scaling production up to the level of China or other battery giants like South Korea or Japan is a longshot. “After all, they have been doing this battery-related business for over 10 years. They have more experience in scaling up these materials, in scaling up these technologies,” Shang told me.
These countries are home to the world’s largest battery manufacturers, with CATL and BYD in China and LG Energy in South Korea. But Natron and Peak Energy are both startups, lacking the billions that would allow for massive scale-up, at least in the short term.
“It shouldn’t be underestimated how hard it is to make anything in large volume,” Matt Stock, a product director at Benchmark, told me. Largely due to the maturity of lithium-ion battery supply chains, the research firm doesn’t see sodium-ion becoming the dominant energy storage tech anytime soon. Rather, by 2030, Benchmark forecasts that sodium-ion batteries will comprise 5% of the battery energy storage market, increasing to over 10% by 2040. BloombergNEF is somewhat more optimistic, predicting sodium-ion will make up 12% of the stationary energy storage market by 2030.
And while storage may be the most obvious near-term use case for sodium-ion batteries, it’s certainly not the only industry that stands to benefit. China is experimenting with using these batteries in two- and three-wheeled vehicles such as electric scooters, bikes, and motorcycles. And as the tech improves, Stock said it’s possible that sodium-ion batteries could become a viable option for longer-range EVs as well.
Ultimately, Dales thinks these batteries will follow a similar technological trajectory to lithium iron phosphate, a chemistry that many in the west thought would never be suitable for use in electric vehicle batteries. “Over time, our view is that sodium-ion will continue to increase its energy density just like [lithium iron phosphate] did,” Dales told me. Now, lithium iron phosphate is the dominant battery chemistry for Chinese-made EVs. “But what actually happened was it was so cheap and they made it better and better and better than now it’s taking over the world. We see this playing out again with sodium-ion.”
Benchmark, on the other hand, is more circumspect regarding sodium-ion’s world dominating potential. Stock said he sees the technology more as a supplement to lithium-ion, which can swoop in when lithium prices boom or critical minerals shortages hit. “When that happens, something like sodium-ion can fill the space. And that’s really where it’s a complementary technology rather than a replacement,” he told me. “If there were other technologies as mature as sodium-ion, we’d also see those being scaled alongside it, but sodium-ion is kind of next in line.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/sodium-batteries-china
California Has Just Approved New Blueprint for Offshore Wind. The Massive Projects Will Cost Billions
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Harnessing clean energy is a venture of unprecedented scope in California, bringing big changes to Humboldt and the Central Coast, and requiring 26 ports along the coast.
The post California Has Just Approved New Blueprint for Offshore Wind. The Massive Projects Will Cost Billions appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
Judge ends Giuliani bankruptcy, allowing other claims to proceed
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
White House urged to double check Microsoft isn’t funneling AI to China via G42 deal
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Windows maker insisted everything will be locked down and secure – which given its reputation, uh-oh!
Two House committee chairs have sent a public letter to the White House asking it to look into a deal between AI R&D outfit G42 and Microsoft.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/g42_uae_us_house/
Lilbits: A new PC with an old processor, ARM’s upscaling tech, Snapdragon X benchmarks, and another Rabbit R1 security issue
date: 2024-07-12, from: Liliputing
The Zilog Z80 microprocessor is an 8-bit chip that was first released in the 1970s and used in a variety of classic computers and game consoles including the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, and Sega Master System. While its features are very dated by 2024 standards, the chip was in production for five decades and was only […]
The post Lilbits: A new PC with an old processor, ARM’s upscaling tech, Snapdragon X benchmarks, and another Rabbit R1 security issue appeared first on Liliputing.
Rethinking Priorities in Quantum Computing
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: RAND blog
The emergence of quantum computing suggests limitless possibilities in chemistry, material science, simulations to predict outcomes, and other areas. But even if sufficiently good quantum hardware is built, are there algorithms that can leverage the laws of quantum mechanics to solve difficult problems?
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/rethinking-priorities-in-quantum-computing.html
American Hacker in Turkey Linked to Massive AT&T Breach
date: 2024-07-12, from: 404 Media Group
John Binns, who was previously arrested in Turkey, is linked to the newly announced breach of AT&T which impacted “nearly all” of the company’s customers, multiple sources told 404 Media.
https://www.404media.co/american-hacker-in-turkey-linked-to-massive-at-t-breach/
Time may be running out on US temporary pier to Gaza
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The temporary pier set up to deliver needed humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza may have already made its last delivery.
U.S. defense officials Friday said that no date has been set to re-anchor the pier after an attempt to connect it to the Gaza shore on Wednesday failed due to a combination of technical issues and bad weather.
“It’s something that we are assessing day by day,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.
“We know for the next few days there are going to be higher sea states that would not allow a re-anchoring to be possible,” she said. “I just don’t have more information to provide on when and if a re-anchoring date has been or will be possible, if a re-anchoring does happen.”
The temporary pier, also known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, has been sitting at the Israeli port of Ashdod since late last month due to bad weather and rough seas.
Despite weather and technical issues, the Pentagon credits the temporary pier with helping to deliver more than 8,000 metric tons of aid from the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus to Gaza since operations began in mid-May.
“We’re very proud of our service members and all those supporting this effort and who have enabled vital humanitarian assistance to get into those in Gaza who need it most,” Singh said. “Without a doubt, lives have been saved because of their work and commitment under very challenging conditions.”
Still, the effort to get aid into Gaza using the temporary pier has generated some criticism, with delivery of the aid to civilians hampered by fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group.
The United Nations suspended delivery of aid coming over the pier on June 9, following an Israeli hostage rescue operation that killed more than 270 Palestinians, pointing to a danger to its staff.
Israel and the United States denied allegations that the pier was used during the rescue operation, but U.N. officials voiced concerns that even the perception that the pier was involved could endanger their humanitarian mission.
As a result, much of the aid was stuck at a staging area on the beach, failing to get to hundreds of thousands of Gazans facing what humanitarian groups have described as a food emergency.
There are also questions about what will happen to additional aid still sitting in Cyprus or on U.S. ships waiting to be taken into Gaza.
The Pentagon said Friday if the pier does not resume operations, it will find other ways to get aid into Gaza.
“What we are committed to is making sure that every single piece of aid, metric ton of aid, that is in Cyprus is moved into Gaza,” Singh said.
One option, according to the Pentagon, would be to get use the port of Ashdod, a delivery method Singh said is in a “proof-of-concept stage right now.”
Singh also said there would be ongoing coordination with the Israeli government on other ways to expand aid delivery.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly portrayed the effort to deliver aid via the pier as a temporary solution to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and have characterized the mission as a success even though it has been in operation for a total of only about 20 days due to weather and technical issues.
“[The pier] has enabled the development of Cyprus as a port for inspections and deliveries directly into Gaza,” Singh said.
“The deployment of this pier has also helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza,” she said. “Since the opening of these crossings, we’ve seen more trucks moving from Jordan directly into northern Gaza to help alleviate the dire humanitarian conditions.”
The pier was first shut down in late May due to storms, just days after it began operation.
Deliveries resumed on June 8. But U.S. Central Command again detached the pier in late June to prevent expected rough seas from causing fresh damage.
https://www.voanews.com/a/time-may-be-running-out-on-us-temporary-pier-to-gaza/7695980.html
Judge orders Santa Ana to remove ‘flawed’ language from ballot measure that would allow noncitizens to vote in city elections
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The LAist
A lawsuit against the city claimed the language was “unlawfully partisan.”
You Can Now Visit France’s First-Ever Cheese Museum
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Musée du Fromage in Paris hosts tastings and teaches visitors about traditional cheesemaking practices
IPCC’s Next Assessment Needs to Tackle the Complexities of Catastrophic Risk
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: RAND blog
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is well positioned to tackle the global threats posed by the climate emergency. What is needed is a concerted effort to confront the stark realities of catastrophic risk and interpret that literature through a policy-relevant lens.
TCL’s first smartphones with NXTPAPER displays are now available in the US (with limited carrier availability)
date: 2024-07-12, from: Liliputing
TCL’s NXTPAPER technology offers a glare-free viewing experience that the company says is more paper-like than the glossy screens that you find on most modern smartphones and tablets. Up until now the displays have mostly been used in tablets, but now the first two TCL smartphones with NXTPAPER displays are available in the United States. […]
The post TCL’s first smartphones with NXTPAPER displays are now available in the US (with limited carrier availability) appeared first on Liliputing.
Ubuntu security updates are a confusing mess
date: 2024-07-12, from: OS News
I’ve read this article several times now, and I’m still not entirely sure how to properly summarise the main points without leaving important details out. If you really boil it down to the very bare essentials, which packages get updates on which Ubuntu release is a confusing mess that most normal users will never be able to understand, potentially leaving them vulnerable to security flaws that have already been widely patched and are available on Ubuntu – just not your specific Ubuntu version, your specific customer type, or the specific package type in question. So, in the case of McPhail here, they needed a patched version of tomcat 9 for Ubuntu 22.04. This patched version was available for Ubuntu 18.04 users because not only is 18.04 an LTS release – meaning five years of support – Canonical also offers a commercial Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) subscription for 18.04, so if you’re paying for that, you get the patched tomcat9. On Ubuntu 20.04, another LTS release, the patched version of tomcat9 is available for everyone, but for the version McPhail is running, the newer LTS release 22.04, it’s only available for Ubuntu Pro subscribers (24.04 is not affected, so not relevant for this discussion). Intuitively, this doesn’t make any sense. The main cause of the weird discrepancy between 20.04 and 22.04 is that Canonical’s LTS support only covers the packages in main (about 10% of the total amount of packages), whereas tomcat9 lives in universe (90% of packages). LTS packages in universe are only supported on a “best effort” basis, and one of the ways a patched universe package can be made available to non-paying LTS users is if it is inhereted from Debian, which happens to be the case for tomcat9 in 20.04, while in 22.04, it’s considered part of an Ubuntu Pro subscription. So, there’s a fixed package, but 22.04 LTS users, who may expect LTS to truly mean LTS, don’t get the patched version that exists and is ready to go without issues. Wild. This is incredibly confusing, and would make me run for the Debian hills before my next reboot. I understand maintaining packages is a difficult, thankless task, but the nebulousness here is entirely of Canonical’s own making, and it’s without a doubt leaving users vulnerable who fully expect to be safe and all patched up because they’re using an LTS release.
https://www.osnews.com/story/140219/ubuntu-security-updates-are-a-confusing-mess/
CI Yacht Club celebrates its centennial
date: 2024-07-12, from: Catalina Islander
The Catalina Island Yacht Club opened its 100th season Saturday, May 25, with a bang. Among the highlights was a cannon shot fired as the American flag was raised to begin the opening ceremony. A proclamation from Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office honoring the Club was presented to Commodore John Wells. The ceremonies were concluded with […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/ci-yacht-club-celebrates-its-centennial/
Edison misses some drinking water tests
date: 2024-07-12, from: Catalina Islander
Southern California Edison apparently missed or did not complete 93 state-mandated drinking water tests here over the past half-decade, according to a recent mail notice from Edison. That’s out of 8,000 tests a year, according to an Edison spokesperson. Edison reports that it has changed internal procedures to prevent a re-occurrence. Edison recently notified Island […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/edison-misses-some-drinking-water-tests/
EPA Reaches $241 Million Settlement With Marathon Oil
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The company was illegally polluting the air at nearly 90 facilities in North Dakota, a complaint alleges
Celebrating Independence Day
date: 2024-07-12, from: Catalina Islander
The city of Avalon and Catalina Island celebrated America’s Independence Day on July 4, with a parade, home decorating contest, concert and, of course, a fireworks show. The theme of the celebration was a tribute to the 1920s-’30s on the island.
https://thecatalinaislander.com/celebrating-independence-day/
3D DNA Preserved for 52,000 Years in Freeze-Dried Woolly Mammoth Remains
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
For the first time, researchers have mapped ancient genetic material in unprecedented detail
What’s Next for MiSTer
date: 2024-07-12, from: Stephen Smith’s blog
Introduction MiSTer is a collection of FPGA implementations for pretty much any early 8-bit computer, console or arcade system. Then there are many implementations of a selection of 16-bit and 32-bit systems. Most notably there is an FPGA implementation of the Motorola 68000/68020 used in early Macs, Amigas and Atari STs. On the PC side […]
https://smist08.wordpress.com/2024/07/12/whats-next-for-mister/
Deno July Update: monorepo, workspace, and private npm registry support
date: 2024-07-12, from: Deno News
Deno July Update
This month’s update includes Deno 1.45, JSR updates, and more! Let’s dive right in.
Join us for
a
livestream next Tuesday, July 16th, 9am PT (UTC-7), where we cover
how to setup monorepos and workspaces with Deno and answer your
questions.
Deno 1.45: Workspaces, monorepos, private npm registries
We’ve had a busy summer so far, with added support for workspaces, monorepo, and private npm registries (as of 1.44).
Workspace support
There are two forms of supported workspaces: Deno-first workspaces
(defined in a root-level deno.json ) and
backwards-compatible npm workspaces.
To get started, define a “workspace” element inside
your deno.json and list the member directories:
{
"workspace": ["./add", "./subtract"]
}
npm workspaces also work in Deno, whether you’re including
a Deno library in a larger npm workspace or vice versa.
To learn more about workspaces and to see examples, check out Deno Docs.
We’re also hosting a one-hour livestream on YouTube on Tuesday, July 16th, 9AM PT (UTC-7) to cover our new workspace support in detail and answer your questions.
Private npm registries
As of Deno 1.44, you can use an .npmrc file to configure
Deno to fetch packages from a private registry. Here’s an example:
// .npmrc
@mycompany:registry=http://mycompany.com:8111/
//mycompany.com:8111/:_auth=secretToken
// deno.json
{
"imports": {
"@mycompany/package": "npm:@mycompany/package@1.0.0"
}
}
// main.ts
import { hello } from "@mycompany/package";
console.log(hello());
$ deno run main.ts
Hello world!
You can also watch a short demo on how to use private npm registries on YouTube.
Other runtime updates
We’ve made a ton of improvements and bug fixes to the Deno runtime in 1.44 and 1.45. The most notable updates being:
- gRPC connections are now supported
-
improved lockfile management with
the
new
–frozenflag that lets you know if your lockfile is out of date -
updated
deno installthat will behave more likenpm installto support common workflows -
deno init –libto easily setup a new library -
deno compilenow supports the–envflag
And more!
Read the full 1.45 release notes ⇒
JSR: Hono, Deno Standard Library, and more
Everyday, we continue to see modules being added to JSR. Recent ones of note include the Deno Standard Library and Hono. Note that we are working towards stabilizing the Standard Library, which will be stabilized on a package-by-package basis. (As of this newsletter, we have stabilized 13 out of 38 utility packages.)
We also recently published a video that shows, side-by-side, publishing a TypeScript module to npm vs. JSR. There are a bunch of steps that one must take to make sure the right files are getting to npm, which are handled by JSR behind the scenes:
From the community
The 5th deco.cx Hackathon
That’s right, the HTMX Edition of this hackathon begins today, Friday, July 12th. It’s a great opportunity to turn your ideas into high-performance websites using HTMX. Plus, there’s also over $5k in prizes 💰️.
#Showcase
There have been plenty of new projects being shared in our Discord’s #showcase channel:
- The Jupyter kernel in Zed is powered by Deno
- A feature flag library for Deno Deploy
- Erodev: a Deno development server with auto-reload
- NoMake-zit: a simple compression/decompression library for Deno
- An excalidraw demo written as a single JSR import 🤯️
- jex: a configurable API client that lets you define strongly-typed HTTP calls with a JSON-like schema
- A simple HTML bundler that offers a CLI, Deno and a web API.
If you’ve created something with Deno and would like to share it with the Deno community, please use the Discord’s #showcase channel.
In case you missed it…
- How we made our Deno language server faster ten times faster
- Did you know the Guardian uses Deno to audit 2.7m articles?
- We’ve quietly added more features to Subhosting, our product that lets you easily run third-party JavaScript securely, such as more flexible domain association and KV backup
- Haven’t found time to learn TypeScript? We’re starting a new bite-sized TypeScript tutorial series!
And that’s it for this issue! If you think someone might find this useful, please forward it to them.
— Andy
https://buttondown.email/denonews/archive/deno-july-update/
Sheriff’s Log: July 3 to July 10, 2024
date: 2024-07-12, from: Catalina Islander
The following is the Avalon’s Sheriff’s Stations significant incidents report for the period of July 3 to July 10, 2024. All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Many people who are arrested do not get prosecuted in the first place and many who are prosecuted do not get convicted. […]
https://thecatalinaislander.com/sheriffs-log-july-3-to-july-10-2024/
Santa Clarita Shakespeare Festival to Present “An Evening of Absurdity” and Spanish Language Show
date: 2024-07-12, from: City of Santa Clarita
Join Us for an Annual Summer Theatre Festival at The MAIN The MAIN (24266 Main Street) is excited to present the Santa Clarita Shakespeare Festival annual summer productions which include “An Evening of Absurdity” and “Papá está en la Atlántida” (“Our Dad is in Atlantis”). “An Evening of Absurdity” features one-act plays by master absurdist […]
The post Santa Clarita Shakespeare Festival to Present “An Evening of Absurdity” and Spanish Language Show appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
See Ten Creepy-Crawly Portraits From the Insect Week Photography Contest
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The Royal Entomological Society’s Photography Competition highlights the wonder and diversity of the six-legged creatures that crawl, swim and fly across the planet
April 2024 saw 15% overall increase in visitors compared to April 2023
date: 2024-07-12, from: Catalina Islander
The April 2024 visitor count increased by more than 15% compared with April 2023, according to data recently released by Love Catalina Island Tourism Authority. “April visitation increased year-over-year by 15.3% or 12,833 visitors with 96,442 total arrivals,” according to the Love Catalina website. “April’s total arrival count was above the three, five and ten-year […]
CISA broke into a US federal agency, and no one noticed for a full 5 months
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Red team exercise revealed a score of security fails
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) says a red team exercise at a certain unnamed federal agency in 2023 revealed a string of security failings that exposed its most critical assets.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/cisa_broke_into_fed_agency/
NATO summit highlights stakes of US elections
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
U.S. lawmakers meeting with NATO allies in Washington this week are looking at how the U.S. presidential election in November may affect support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
https://www.voanews.com/a/nato-summit-highlights-stakes-of-us-elections-/7695753.html
Election bill unneeded and intimidating, voting rights advocates say
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
Washington — Congressional Republicans joined by some Democrats this week passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
During a media briefing Wednesday, voting and immigration rights advocates addressed concerns about the bill and false claims regarding noncitizens voting in state and federal elections.
“The reality is that states have multiple systems in place to deter noncitizen voting,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Morales-Doyle said voting by noncitizens is “exceedingly” rare.
“It is already a crime many times over for noncitizens to vote in state and federal elections. It’s a state crime to register as a noncitizen. It’s a federal crime to register as a noncitizen. It’s a state crime to vote as a noncitizen. It’s a federal crime to vote as a noncitizen. There are severe penalties for those who violate these laws, they face prison time, they face deportation,” he said.
The Brennan Center for Justice, part of the New York University School of Law, is a member of a broad coalition that tracks election-related disinformation. One of the biggest myths, the center said in April, is that noncitizens are voting.
“Yes, people do things that are illegal sometimes, but they take into account the payoff and the consequences. And here, the payoff is minimal. It’s the ability to cast one vote and in one election, or maybe even just to put your name on the rolls. And the consequences are extreme and severe. They include deportation, prison time, large fines, it just does not make any sense for someone to attempt this crime,” Morales-Doyle said.
In 2017, the Brennan Center reviewed 42 jurisdictions, encompassing 23.5 million votes from the 2016 presidential election, and identified only 30 possible incidents of noncitizen voting, or 0.0001% of the votes cast.
Citizen-only voting movement
In calling for the SAVE Act, Republicans partially rely on a discredited 2014 study that claimed noncitizen voting could influence congressional and presidential elections. The growing citizen-only voting movement combines election fraud concerns and illegal immigration, both key issues for Republicans this presidential election.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, maintains a database of election fraud cases showing 21 cases since 2003. The cases are detailed, including any criminal penalties paid.
The conversation about noncitizen voting grew in 2020 when House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans began advocating for the SAVE Act.
Johnson often cites data indicating that noncitizens are registered to vote in some municipalities, including New York City, Washington, Takoma Park, Maryland, and Montpelier, Vermont. These cities allow noncitizen residents to register and vote only in certain local elections.
In 2023, Takoma Park commemorated the 30th anniversary of the first noncitizen residents voting. An initiative, passed in 1992 by the Takoma Park City Council, gave immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, the right to vote in city elections for mayor and city council if they live within the city limits, are not registered to vote elsewhere, and are at least 16 years old.
Johnson said the SAVE Act would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. In practice, this means that voters would have to produce one of several documents listed in the act.
“It’s clear that our election process is worth protecting. It is our responsibility as members of Congress and concerned leaders of citizens groups and organizations who care about the integrity of our system and our elections,” Johnson said in a statement.
Critics argue the SAVE Act could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who lack immediate access to citizenship documents, particularly the poor, women, and people of color.
A survey in January by the Center for Civic Democracy and Engagement at the University of Maryland shows that more than 9% of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don’t have proof of citizenship readily available.
“There are myriad reasons for this — the documents might be in the home of another family member or in a safety deposit box. And at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen,” according to the study.
The SAVE Act includes a process for those without proof of citizenship readily available.
The bill mandates that states create a process allowing citizens who lack proof of citizenship to submit alternative documentation and sign a document, under penalty of perjury, affirming their U.S. citizenship and eligibility to vote in federal elections, which mirrors the existing voter registration process but imposes additional administrative burdens on election officials.
“So, what does that mean to provide proof that you’re a citizen, if you don’t have documentary proof that you’re a citizen? I just don’t know. So, it’s, there’s the vagueness there that is problematic. I don’t know what process they’re contemplating or what that’s going to look like,” Morales-Doyle said.
The act also establishes criminal penalties for election officials who mistakenly register noncitizens.
“So, no matter what that alternative path ends up looking like … you’re hanging the threat of criminal prosecution over the head of any election official that allows someone to go into that alternative route,” Morales-Doyle said.
The House voted 221-198 to approval the SAVE Act. The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it is likely to be rejected.
Russia Is a Strategic Spoiler in the Indo-Pacific
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: RAND blog
Moscow has recently shown that it remains a formidable presence in the Indo-Pacific. But as long as Russian interference does not fundamentally challenge the United States’ own Indo-Pacific strategy, then Moscow’s interference is just part and parcel of the emerging multipolar order.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/07/russia-is-a-strategic-spoiler-in-the-indo-pacific.html
Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Linux laptop now available with Ryzen 7 8845HS or Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chips
date: 2024-07-12, from: Liliputing
The Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 is a premium laptop with a 14 inch, 2880 x 1800 pixel display and a compact design. It’s also a laptop that ships standard with Linux – Tuxedo offers its own Ubuntu-based operating system called Tuxedo OS, but you can also configure the notebook with Ubuntu or Kubuntu software. Windows […]
The post Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Linux laptop now available with Ryzen 7 8845HS or Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chips appeared first on Liliputing.
Immerse Yourself in a “Symphony of Colors”
date: 2024-07-12, from: City of Santa Clarita
Zony Gordon Painting Exhibit at the Old Town Newhall Library Branch The City of Santa Clarita is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition, “Symphony of Colors,” featuring the works of local contemporary impressionist artist Zony Gordon. This exhibition will run from Friday, July 19, to Wednesday, October 16, at the Old Town Newhall Library Branch […]
The post Immerse Yourself in a “Symphony of Colors” appeared first on City of Santa Clarita.
https://santaclarita.gov/blog/2024/07/12/immerse-yourself-in-a-symphony-of-colors/
Archaeologists Unearth 4,000-Year-Old Ceremonial Temple in Peru
date: 2024-07-12, from: Smithsonian Magazine
The structure appears to predate Machu Picchu, the country’s best-known archaeological site, by 3,500 years
Two Years Since Webb’s First Images: Celebrating with the Penguin and the Egg
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
To celebrate the second science anniversary of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the team has released a near- and mid-infrared image on July 12, 2024, of two interacting galaxies: The Penguin and the Egg. Webb specializes in capturing infrared light – which is beyond what our own eyes can see – allowing us to view and […]
Back to the Basics: How Many People Are in the People’s Liberation Army?
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: RAND blog
The People’s Liberation Army is often described as the largest military in the world. But how big is this force, really? Depending on who you ask and what you count, the details are murky and confusing.
Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable
date: 2024-07-12, from: 404 Media Group
One of the world’s largest investment banks wonders if generative AI will be worth the huge investment and hype: “will this large spend ever pay off?”
https://www.404media.co/goldman-sachs-ai-is-overhyped-wildly-expensive-and-unreliable/
NASA Marshall Engineers Unveil Versatile, Low-cost Hybrid Engine Testbed
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
In June, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, unveiled an innovative, 11-inch hybrid rocket motor testbed. The new hybrid testbed, which features variable flow capability and a 20-second continuous burn duration, is designed to provide a low-cost, quick-turnaround solution for conducting hot-fire tests of advanced nozzles and other rocket engine hardware, […]
PowerToys bring fun tweaks to Windows 10 and 11
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Mac migrants (if any exist) will find Powertoys Run strangely familiar
Friday FOSS Fest Microsoft’s collection of Power Toys for the current versions of Windows has some nifty little helpers, and Power Run may be comfortingly familiar if you’re more used to macOS.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/latest_powertoys_bring_run_fun/
Comedic Consultant
date: 2024-07-12, from: Tedium feed
Trevor Noah has been on the Microsoft payroll for years, and nobody apparently noticed until now. Is that a problem? (Hint: Yes.)
https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16742023/trevor-noah-microsoft-conflict-of-interest
Stackable Certificates Could Be a Lifeline for Governments Facing an IT Talent Crisis
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: RAND blog
How can the public sector bridge the widening tech talent gap and improve retention? The answer may lie in upskilling current employees through stackable certificate programs.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
After Biden's debate performance, the presidential race is unchanged.
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5036518/biden-trump-poll
Featured Friday: Frankenstein Fables
date: 2024-07-12, from: John August blog
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we look at how writers have adapted, remixed, distorted and exploded the story of Frankenstein’s Monster. The post Featured Friday: Frankenstein Fables first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/frankenstein-fables
The Biden Problem Has Been Years In The Making
date: 2024-07-12, from: The Lever News
As concerns mount over Biden, the Democratic Party reminds us this isn’t a democracy.
https://www.levernews.com/the-biden-problem-has-been-years-in-the-making/
IcedID henchman gets nine years in clanger for abusing malware to drain bank accounts
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
The slippery Ukrainian national must also pay a hefty $74 million on top of the jail time
A Ukrainian malware kingpin who evaded law enforcement for a decade will face nine years in prison for his role in the IcedID malware operation.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/icedid_henchman_gets_nine_years/
Kremlin calls talk of long-range missiles in Ukraine ‘dangerous escalation’
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
Adam Engst Joining CCATP Podcast Regularly
date: 2024-07-12, from: TidBITS blog
If you like TidBITS and Apple tech podcasts, take note: Adam Engst is now a regular contributor to Allison Sheridan’s Chit Chat Across the Pond podcast. For the inaugural episode, they talk about how to avoid missing calendar and reminder notifications and a slew of related topics.
https://tidbits.com/2024/07/12/adam-engst-joining-ccatp-podcast-regularly/
Behind the Blog: Embargoes and Epic Reel Pulls
date: 2024-07-12, from: 404 Media Group
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss embargoes, research papers, terminology and epic Reel pulls.
https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-embargoes-and-epic-reel-pulls/
Prince Harry’s olive branch to Pat Tillman’s mom at ESPYs doesn’t quiet controversy
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Social media lit up after Harry’s acceptance speech at the ESPYs, with people still fiercely divided over whether the British royal should have received an award named for an American war hero.
Pine64 Quartz64 Zero is a $15 single-board PC with RK3566 and 1GB RAM
date: 2024-07-12, from: Liliputing
Two years after launching the Quartz64 Model B single-board computer with a Rockchip RK3566 processor and support for up to 8GB of RAM, Pine64 has introduced a stripped down model with a much lower price tag. The new Quartz64 Zero is an upcoming credit card-sized PC with a RK3566T processor and a $15 price tag […]
The post Pine64 Quartz64 Zero is a $15 single-board PC with RK3566 and 1GB RAM appeared first on Liliputing.
https://liliputing.com/pine64-quartz64-zero-is-a-15-single-board-pc-with-rk3566-and-1gb-ram/
New Pac-12 bowl partnerships for 2024-25 are the same as the old Pac-12 bowl partnerships (despite realignment)
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The Rose Bowl will be part of the expanded CFP, but all other games affiliated with the conference in recent years will continue to host the 12 schools.
New Outlook set for GA despite missing some key features
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Classic Outlook for Windows shuffles a little closer to the end of the road
The new Microsoft Outlook will hit General Availability on August 1, and Microsoft is not backing down on the move away from COM (Component Object Model) add-ins.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/new_outlook_set_for_ga/
How bad are wildfires going to be in California this summer?
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
One of the state’s top fire experts weighs in.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/12/how-bad-are-wildfires-going-to-be-in-california-this-summer/
How you feel about the economy may depend on how you vote
date: 2024-07-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Feelings about the economy have been sort of middling, with consumers optimistic about jobs but pessimistic about prices. But there’s another aspect of consumer surveys that doesn’t often get reported — sentiment can skew heavily partisan. Today: how consumers see the world through Republican or Democrat lenses. Plus, we’ll do the numbers on wholesale prices, hear about a Marathon Oil pollution settlement and learn about a downturn in TV and film production.
The end is in sight for a Bay Area heat wave that has lasted nearly two weeks
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
An excessive heat warning ends at 8 p.m. Friday.
Decapitated couple found in California mobile home identified as the suspect’s parents
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
A 41-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents after deputies discovered the elderly couple’s bodies.
HPE to build supercomputer to ‘enhance Japan’s AI sovereignty’
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Powered by Nvidia GPUs, natch, as GPU maker’s CEO talks up mega bitbarn ‘AI factories’
HPE is to build a supercomputer for Japan’s AIST research institution, using thousands of Nvidia’s latest H200 GPUs to support large foundational models for generative AI in research.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/hpe_to_build_supercomputer_to/
San Francisco homicide: Shooting in the Mission District
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Calls to 911 around 12:15 a.m. Tuesday reported gunshots and what sounded like a vehicle collision.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/12/san-francisco-homicide-shooting-in-the-mission-district/
Call, text logs for 110M AT&T customers stolen from compromised cloud storage
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Snowflake? Snowflake
AT&T has admitted that cyberattackers grabbed a load of its data for the second time this year, and if you think the first haul was big, you haven’t seen anything: This latest one includes data on “nearly all” AT&T wireless customers - and those served by mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) running on AT&T’s network. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/att_110_million_call_text_logs/
Break-in at ‘third-party cloud platform’ leaked 110M customer records, says AT&T
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Snowflake? Snowflake
AT&T has admitted that cyberattackers grabbed a load of its data for the second time this year, and if you think the first haul was big you haven’t seen anything: This one includes data on “nearly all” AT&T wireless customers - and those served by mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) running on AT&T’s network. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/att_admits_110_million_ppl_data_lost/
Vivid Portrait of Interacting Galaxies Marks Webb’s Second Anniversary
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
Two for two! A duo of interacting galaxies commemorates the second science anniversary of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which takes constant observations, including images and highly detailed data known as spectra. Its operations have led to a “parade” of discoveries by astronomers around the world. “Since President Biden and Vice President Harris unveiled the […]
Five arrested for theft at Saratoga Safeway
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Two suspects also cited for stealing about $50 from Mountain Mike’s tip jar.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/12/five-arrested-for-theft-at-saratoga-safeway/
What you’ve been making with the Raspberry Pi AI Kit
date: 2024-07-12, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)
It’s been just over a month since we launched the Raspberry Pi AI Kit and the Raspberry Pi community has responded with characteristic quirkiness. Here are some of the things we’ve seen over the last few weeks.
The post What you’ve been making with the Raspberry Pi AI Kit appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/what-youve-been-making-with-the-raspberry-pi-ai-kit/
Lifesaving drugs, police projects mark first use of opioid settlement cash in California
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
As of June 2023, the bulk of the funds controlled by California cities and counties — more than $200 million — had yet to be spent.
Trumer Pils is brewing a new beer for its 20th Berkeley anniversary
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
The brewery is also holding a big block party in Berkeley to celebrate on Saturday, July 13.
What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly?
date: 2024-07-12, from: Quanta Magazine
Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle.The post What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-could-explain-the-gallium-anomaly-20240712/
Poll: 60% of US adults support protection of access to in vitro fertilization
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Relatively few Americans fully endorse the idea that a fertilized egg should have the same rights as a pregnant woman. But a significant share say it describes their views at least somewhat well, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The new survey comes as questions grow around reproductive health access in the continued fallout from the decision by the Supreme Court to end federal abortion protections. The poll found that a solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason.
But anti-abortion advocates are increasingly pushing for broader measures that would give rights and protection to embryos and fetuses, which could have massive implications for fertility treatments and other areas of health care.
The poll suggests that when it comes to more nuanced questions about issues such as in vitro fertilization — which may be affected by the restrictive climate in some states, even though they were not previously considered as part of “abortion” — there is general support for reproductive health protections. But the poll also shows some uncertainty, as Americans are faced with situations that would not have arisen before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
According to the poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment in which eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a lab to form an embryo. Views on banning the destruction of embryos created through IVF are less developed, with 4 in 10 adults expressing a neutral opinion.
“I believe that it’s a woman’s right to determine what she wants to do with her pregnancy, and she should be cared for. There should be no question about that,” said John Evangelista, 73. “And IVF, I mean, for years, it’s saved a lot of people grief — because they want to have a child. Why would you want to limit this for people?”
Earlier this year, Alabama’s largest hospital paused in vitro fertilization treatments, following a court ruling that said frozen embryos are the legal equivalent of children. Soon after, the governor signed legislation shielding doctors from potential legal liability in order to restart procedures in the state.
But the political damage was done. Democrats routinely cite IVF concerns as part of a larger problem where women in some states are getting worse medical care since the fall of Roe. They link delayed IVF care to cases in states with abortion restrictions, where women must wait until they are very sick to get care. Democrats say these issues show how GOP efforts to overturn Roe have profoundly affected all facets of reproductive care.
On the other hand, protections for IVF are supported by Americans across the political spectrum: About three-quarters of Democrats and 56% of Republicans favor preserving access to IVF, while about 4 in 10 independents are in favor and just under half, 46%, neither favor nor oppose protecting access.
For some, their views have been shaped by personal experience with the procedure.
“I’m about to go through IVF right now, and you’re trying to get as many embryos as you can so you can have more chances at having one live birth, or more than that, if you’re lucky,” said Alexa Voloscenko, 30. “I just don’t want people to be having more trouble to access IVF; it’s already hard enough.”
But the poll found that about 3 in 10 Americans say that the statement “human life begins at conception, so a fertilized egg is a person with the same rights as a pregnant woman” describes their views on abortion law and policy extremely or very well, while an additional 18% say it describes their views somewhat well. About half say the statement describes their views “not very well” or “not well at all.”
This view is in tension with some aspects of IVF care — in particular, fertility treatments where eggs are fertilized and develop into embryos in a lab. Sometimes, embryos are accidentally damaged or destroyed, and unused embryos may be discarded.
Republicans are about twice as likely as Democrats or independents to say that the statement about fertilized eggs having the same rights as a pregnant woman describes their views extremely or very well. About 4 in 10 Republicans say that compared with about 2 in 10 Democrats and independents.
And views are less clear overall on a more specific aspect of policy related to IVF — making it illegal to destroy embryos created during the process. One-quarter of U.S. adults somewhat or strongly favor banning the destruction of embryos created through IVF, while 4 in 10 have a neutral view and about one-third somewhat or strongly oppose it.
“Human life begins at a heartbeat,” said Steven Otey, 73, a Republican who doesn’t believe created embryos should be destroyed. “Embryos … can become babies, we shouldn’t be destroying them.”
About 3 in 10 Republicans and roughly one-quarter of Democrats favor banning the destruction of embryos created through IVF. Four in 10 Republicans — and nearly 6 in 10 independents — have a neutral view.
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Gmail is a little over 20 years old in 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail
EU officials say X’s paid-for blue check deceives users and breaks law
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Preliminary findings also claim platform not compliant with DSA requirements for transparency, research access
The European Commission says the blue checkmark system used by micro-blogging platform X — formerly Twitter — effectively deceives users and fails to comply with the newly introduced Digital Service Act (DSA).…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/eu_officials_say_xs_paidfor/
New North Sunnyvale development proposals raises concerns about lack of retail space, grocery stores
date: 2024-07-12, from: San Jose Mercury News
Popular plazas along Duane Avenue and Lawrence Expressway could be replace with residential units, reducing the amount of retail space in the area.
Tesla Is Delaying the Robotaxi Reveal
date: 2024-07-12, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Heavy rains triggered a deadly landslide in Nepal that swept away 60 people • More than a million residents are still without power in and around Houston • It will be about 80 degrees Fahrenheit in Berlin on Sunday for the Euro 2024 final, where England will take on Spain.
THE TOP FIVE
- Biden administration announces $1.7 billion to convert auto plants
into EV factories
The Biden administration announced yesterday that the Energy Department will pour $1.7 billion into helping U.S. automakers convert shuttered or struggling manufacturing facilities into EV factories. The money will go to factories in eight states (including swing states Michigan and Pennsylvania) and recipients include Stellantis, Volvo, GM, and Harley-Davidson. Most of the funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act and it could create nearly 3,000 new jobs and save 15,000 union positions at risk of elimination, the Energy Department said. “Agencies across the federal government are rushing to award the rest of their climate cash before the end of Biden’s first term,” The Washington Post reported.
DOE
- Tesla delays robotaxi unveiling
Tesla is delaying the much-anticipated unveiling of its robotaxi by about two months until the prototype design can be improved and finalized, Bloomberg reported. The initial date for the autonomous taxi to make its first public appearance was August 8 but it’s looking more like October now. Tesla shares fell about 8% on the news, bringing an end to an 11-day streak of gains.
- Study: Climate change shortening Northwest Passage shipping season
There’s a convenient theory that climate change will make Arctic shipping routes more accessible as sea ice melts. But new research published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment suggests the opposite is true. The authors found that between 2007 and 2021, the ice-free shipping seasons in the Northwest Passage – which runs through northern Canada and connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – actually shortened significantly because warmer temperatures are causing some of the thickest, oldest Arctic sea ice to flow south into the passage’s “choke points,” posing a high risk to ships. “The variability of shipping season and, in particular, the shortening of the season will impact not only international shipping but also resupply and the cost of food in many Arctic communities, which require a prompt policy response,” the authors wrote.
Broken sea ice in Baffin Bay, in the Northwest Passage.
Alison
Cook
- Natural disasters cost China $13 billion already this year
Natural disasters have caused $13 billion in direct economic losses in China just in the first six months of 2024, according to the Chinese government. That’s up from about $5 billion in losses in the same period last year. The disasters run the gamut from floods to drought to heavy snow to landslides, plus a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The country’s weather bureau warned recently that climate change could raise maximum temperatures across the country by 5 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 30 years. Rainfall is also increasing. Earlier this month China evacuated a quarter of a million people from the eastern provinces as torrential rain caused flooding. The extreme weather is threatening production of food crops including rice, wheat, soybeans, and corn.
- Marathon and EPA reach record settlement over Clean Air Act
violations
Oil giant Marathon must pay a $64.5 million fine for violating the Clean Air Act at its oil and gas operations in North Dakota as part of a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department announced. The company also has to invest $177 million in cleaning up those operations, which could result in the equivalent of 2.3 million tons of reduced pollution over the next five years. The EPA accused Marathon of violating the Clean Air Act at 90 facilities in the state, resulting in huge amounts of methane emissions, as well as illegal pollution linked to respiratory disease. The case is “the largest of 12 similar efforts by the Biden administration to target emissions from the oil and gas industry,” according to The Associated Press.
THE KICKER
“We want to give future generations as much glaciological knowledge as possible in case they need it.” –Douglas MacAyeal, a professor of geophysical sciences with the University of Chicago, who is part of a group of scientists calling for more research into whether glacial geoengineering could help prevent catastrophic ice melt caused by climate change.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/tesla-robotaxi-date-unveil-musk
Australia’s migration policy and disability discrimination
date: 2024-07-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
Australia is sometimes called a “migration nation,” as a third of its population was born abroad. That said, people with disabilities are often not welcome. Many foreigners with disabilities or serious medical conditions are routinely denied an Australian visa. But there’s pressure for policy change. Also on the show: A three-judge panel has concluded that many U.S. college athletes are likely employees and may be protected under federal minimum wage laws.
SpaceX hit by inflight Falcon 9 failure
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Upper stage engine suffers a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, leaving Starlink satellites too low
SpaceX has suffered a rare failure after a Falcon 9 upper stage malfunction left a batch of Starlink satellites in a lower-than-planned orbit.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/spacex_suffers_an_inflight_falcon/
Graphics offload continued
date: 2024-07-12, from: Gtk Developer blog
We first introduced support for dmabufs and graphics offload last fall, and it is included in GTK 4.14. Since we last talked about, more improvements have happened, so it is time for another update. Transformations When you rotate your monitor, it changes its aspect from landscape (say, 1920 x 1200 to portrait (1200 x 1920). … Continue reading “Graphics offload continued”
https://blog.gtk.org/2024/07/12/graphics-offload-continued/
Smartphone is already many folks’ only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Future Androids may let you dock them and use them as a desktop – as standard
It’s been tried before, more than once, but if it comes as a stock feature, maybe people will actually start to use the feature.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/android_15_beta_desktop/
Colombia’s president wants cocaine legalized
date: 2024-07-12, from: Marketplace Morning Report
From the BBC World Service: Colombia’s president says a lot of the country’s problems would be solved and the country’s armed conflict could end within a day if the United Nations declared cocaine legal across the world. We’ll discuss. Then, China is constructing twice as many solar and wind plants as the rest of the world combined, and many foreigners with disabilities in Australia are denied visas.
An Ode to the Volume Swipe
date: 2024-07-12, from: 500-ish blog, A collection of posts by M.G. Siegler of around 500 words in length.
https://500ish.com/an-ode-to-the-volume-swipe-b98804133c69?source=rss----662a29c3b19e---4
How DNC Delegates Could Oust Biden
date: 2024-07-12, from: The Lever News
Biden could be forced off the ticket at the Democratic convention, but wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists might hijack the process.
https://www.levernews.com/how-dnc-delegates-could-oust-biden/
Hubble Measures the Distance to a Supernova
date: 2024-07-12, from: NASA breaking news
Measuring the distance to truly remote objects like galaxies, quasars, and galaxy clusters is a crucial task in astrophysics, particularly when it comes to studying the early universe, but it’s a difficult one to complete. We can only measure the distances to a few nearby objects like the Sun, planets, and some nearby stars directly. […]
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-measures-the-distance-to-a-supernova/
P&B: Andrew Stephens
date: 2024-07-12, from: Manu - I write blog
<p>This is the 46th edition of <em>People and Blogs</em>, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Andrew Stephens and his blog, <a href="https://sheep.horse">sheep.horse</a> 🐑🐎</p>To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?
My name is Andrew Stephens. As a child in 1980s small town New Zealand I few in love with the 8-bit micro computers of the time which delightfully allowed my own creations (mostly elaborate text adventures) to be displayed on our TV screen. I never quite lost the thrill of computing so a degree in Computer Science seemed a natural choice. I joined the workforce just as the Internet was taking off and work eventually brought me to Boston, USA where I live now.
My day job is programming C++ but I enjoy stretching myself with projects at home in various media. But what I like most of all is publishing something on the web where everyone can see it.
What’s the story behind your blog?
I first created a (long lost) web page back in 1996 during my student days. I loved reading other people’s stuff on the web and wanted to contribute my own content - it seemed only fair to give something back. I am not sure when I first heard the word blog but I remember thinking it sounded like a stupid idea; nevertheless sometime in the mid 2000s I installed WordPress and started writing just in time to completely miss the heyday of blogging.
My blog has never been popular. Occasionally something I write will get some attention but it soon settles down.
The most modern iteration of my blog was created when I realized that I should be the change I wanted to see. There is no point complaining about the “old internet” fading when we all have the tools to create whatever we want.
The sheep.horse domain name came about because the .horse top level domain had just become available and I couldn’t resist such a stupid offering. Of course all the good .horse domains were snapped up by squatters but sheep.horse was available. According to family lore, “sheep horse” was the first multiple word sentence I uttered as I beheld a lama but it holds no other significance.
It has caused some awkward moments professionally though.
“Great
interview question, I have a blog post on exactly this technical
subject”
“Excellent, what is the URL?”
“ummm, sheep dot
horse”
Thankfully it has never failed to get a laugh.
What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?
I am a big proponent of letting my mind wander when doing something mindless like cleaning or commuting. We spend so much effort minimizing time spent in menial activity but I find such “unproductive” periods both relaxing and useful for generating new ideas. Often times a thought will hit me and rattle around in my head for a few days before I even start to write. Sometimes it is just an opening phrase or a neat metaphor and more than once I have started a piece arguing one side only to talk myself around to the other side. Those pieces often get abandoned - if I don’t feel strongly enough to hold an opinion then I probably have little to say on the subject.
I am a slow writer (I don’t even touch-type properly) but I try to blat everything out in a single evening. Then I let it sit for at least 12 hours to proof like a loaf of bread while I sleep. Then I read through it again and make revisions, usually making it worse. My wife is a very good proof reader and the best presented articles are the ones that she has corrected.
I write almost all of my text in a plain text editor called TextMate (it is what I am typing into now). Apart from checking my spelling it does not get in the way with fancy features. I find “real” word processors distracting.
Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?
My home office is pretty comfortable but I have also written on trains and flights with good results. There is something about writing that puts me in my own world. When I was younger I used to work listening to music but now I find the quiet works best for me. It doesn’t have to be silence, just background noise without voices.
I find getting out into nature really helps with ideas but I have never managed to write anything sitting outside.
A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?
I thought you would never ask. The most modern iteration of my blog is statically generated by a python project of my own called gensite that turns a directory structure of markdown files into modern html and rsync’s the result to my server which is a DigitalOcean droplet. I even wrote some custom markdown tags so that I could include asides and footnotes. I was aiming for mostly text so I based the style of my blog on Edward Tufte’s ideas on document formatting which I was very excited about at the time.
If I was to be honest I would have to admit that I rent a server to run a blog, and maintain a blog to give my server something to do. Writing a static site generator was just to justify both and now I am in too deep to stop now. The actual contents of my site is secondary.
On top of that I have a simple hit counter of my own design. I gradually grew to hate the influence of Google Analytics and vowed not to include it or anything similar on my site because I believe that chasing eyeballs has led us to the state the Internet is in today. However, I am a total hypocrite and found that I really wanted to know if anyone was reading my stuff. So now I just count hits.
Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?
I am happy with the way everything works now - it suits me. But I could not recommend my setup to anyone else. Honestly, the most important part is putting your work somewhere people can access it with minimal fuss. Hosted is fine although I will say that it is important to choose a service that will allow you to migrate your work if you need to part ways with your hosting provider, which is why I think WordPress is a good choice to start with.
One thing I have learned is not to spend too much time futzing with the aesthetics of your blog. Just pick a readable theme - the words are the important part.
Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetising personal blogs?
I have never tried to monetize my work - part of me still considers blogging to be contributing to the wacky ball of nonsense called the internet. My total cost is about $10 a month for hosting and the domain. Perhaps I could get cheaper but this is what works for me now.
Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?
I love passion project single-subject blogs that go into great detail on arcane matters. Matte Shot has been a favorite of mine for a long time.
But I am really interested in the citizen journalists who do rigorous reporting on topics they cover. I have been very interested in cryptocurrency (very much on the “this is all a stupid idea” side of the table) for over a decade and I admire the great reporting done by the likes of David Gerard and Amy Castor. And of course, Molly White’s writing is amazing as well. I have no idea how they can stay so focused on a world they (rightfully) disdain and I would love to hear what motivates them.
Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?
I recently went back to my roots and created a short but elaborate text adventure with illustrations, Voyage of the Marigold. Its my love letter to 80s adventure gamebooks and Star Trek, I get an enormous kick when people tell me they have played it.
This was the 46th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Andrew. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
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Hackers Steal Text and Call Records of ‘Nearly All’ AT&T Customers
date: 2024-07-12, from: 404 Media Group
In one of the most significant data breaches in recent history, hackers stole AT&T customers’ call and text metadata spanning several months.
https://www.404media.co/hackers-steal-text-and-call-records-of-nearly-all-at-t-customers/
Google can totally explain why Chromium browsers quietly tell only its websites about your CPU, GPU usage
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-13, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
OK, now tell us why this isn’t an EU DMA violation – asking for a friend in Brussels
Running a Chromium-based browser, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge? The chances are good it’s quietly telling Google all about your CPU and GPU usage when you visit one of the search giant’s websites.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/chromium_api_system_information/
SAP’s bid to woo open source community meets muted response
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
German software giant says open source is a ‘catalyst for innovation’ but is unlikely to release proprietary code
SAP’s bid to cast itself as an open source friendly company is being met with some scepticism from the community, who suggest the projects are largely based on the German software giant’s interests.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/saps_bid_to_woo_open/
Carl Kanowsky | The Peju Saga, Part 2
date: 2024-07-12, from: The Signal
Following up on my column about Peju Winery and one of its founders, HB Peju: Peju Winery, in the person of Tony Peju, had fought Napa County to run his […]
The post Carl Kanowsky | The Peju Saga, Part 2 appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/carl-kanowsky-the-peju-saga-part-2/
Stop installing that software – you may have just died
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
They’re called role-playing games for a reason …
On Call Life on the frontlines of tech support can be tough, which is why each Friday The Register brings you a fresh instalment of On Call, our reader-contributed column in which you tell your peers what you’ve endured in the name of work.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/on_call/
FLTK 1.4.x Weekly Snapshot (master)
date: 2024-07-12, from: Fast Light Tool Kit
A new weekly snapshot of FLTK 1.4.x (master) is now available
https://www.fltk.org/articles.php?L1931
Today in SCV History (July 12)
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
1900 – Pacific Telephone and Telegraph establishes Newhall exchange; SCV gets first phone. [story
https://scvnews.com/today-in-scv-history-july-12/
Hungary’s Orban, a NATO outlier on Ukraine, talks ‘peace mission’ with Trump
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Donald Trump on Thursday and the pair discussed the “possibilities of peace,” a spokesperson for the prime minister said as he pushes for a cease-fire in Ukraine.
Trump and Orban met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida “as the next stop of his peace mission,” Orban’s spokesperson said. “The discussion was about the possibilities of peace.”
Nationalist leader Orban, a longtime Trump supporter, made surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing in the past two weeks on a self-styled “peace mission,” angering NATO allies.
His meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular vexed some other NATO members, who said the trip handed legitimacy to Putin when the West wants to isolate him over his war in Ukraine.
Orban traveled to Kyiv before visiting Moscow but did not tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about his mission to Russia, Zelenskiy said, dismissing Orban’s ambition of playing the peacemaker.
“Not all the leaders can make negotiations. You need to have some power for this,” Zelenskiy said earlier at a news conference at the NATO summit.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, when asked about Orban’s initiative, said Ukraine would be rightly concerned about any attempt to negotiate a peace deal without involving Kyiv.
“Whatever adventurism is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States,” Sullivan said.
Orban’s self-styled peace mission has also irked many members of the European Union, whose rotating presidency Hungary took over at the start of this month.
The Hungarian embassy in Washington declined to comment on the planned meeting with Trump, which was first reported by Bloomberg.
Orban has been attending a NATO summit hosted by Democratic President Joe Biden. Hungary’s delegation voiced opposition to key NATO positions, while not blocking the alliance from taking action.
Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told Reuters on Wednesday that Hungary believes a second Trump presidency would boost hopes for peace in Ukraine.
Orban hoped to bring an end to the war through peace talks involving both Russia and Ukraine, according to Szijjarto.
Trump has said he would quickly end the war. He has not offered a detailed plan to achieve that, but Reuters reported last month that advisers to the former president had presented him with a plan to end the war in part by making future aid to Kyiv conditional on Ukraine joining peace talks.
In the past several months, foreign officials have regularly sought meetings with Trump and his key advisers to discuss his foreign policy should he beat Biden in the November 5 election. Polls show Trump widening his lead over Biden.
One adviser, Keith Kellogg, has met with several high-ranking foreign officials on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Reuters reported this week.
NATO frustration
Orban appeared isolated at the opening of a NATO meeting on Ukraine on Thursday, sitting alone while other leaders talked in a huddle.
Two European diplomats told Reuters that NATO allies were frustrated with Orban’s actions around the summit but stressed that he had not blocked the alliance from taking action on Ukraine.
Multiple EU leaders made clear Orban was not speaking for the bloc in his discussions on the war in Ukraine.
“I don’t think there’s any point in having conversations with authoritarian regimes that are violating international law,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
Hungary also diverged from its NATO allies on China, which the alliance said is an enabler of Russia’s war effort and poses challenges to security. Hungary does not want NATO to become an “anti-China” bloc, and will not support it doing so, Szijjarto said Thursday.
Microsoft 365’s Chinese host uses just four percent renewable energy: Greenpeace
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Red clouds are in no rush to go green
China’s major cloud computing and datacenter players aren’t going green in a hurry, according to a Greenpeace study – leaving Microsoft tied to a datacenter operator that uses just 4.35 percent renewable energy.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/greenpeace_china_clean_cloud_report/
Webcurios 12/07/24
date: 2024-07-12, from: Web Curios blog
Reading Time: 34 minutes Welcome, one and all, to the very first Web Curios EVER not to be written under a Conservative government! What do you mean ‘it all looks dispiritingly familiar, you’ve not even given the place a lick of paint ffs’?! Ok, so the election wasn’t all good news – loads of people simply couldn’t be bothered…https://webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-12-07-24/
US, South Korea sign nuclear guideline strategy to deter and respond to North Korea
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. commitment to deterrence against North Korea is backed by the full range of U.S. capabilities, including nuclear, U.S. President Joe Biden told South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in a meeting Thursday on the sidelines of a NATO summit.
The two leaders also authorized a guideline on establishing an integrated system of extended deterrence for the Korean peninsula to counter nuclear and military threats from North Korea, Yoon’s office said.
The guideline formalizes the deployment of U.S. nuclear assets on and around the Korean peninsula to deter and respond to potential nuclear attacks by the North, Yoon’s deputy national security adviser Kim Tae-hyo told a briefing in Washington.
“It means U.S. nuclear weapons are specifically being assigned to missions on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said.
Earlier Biden and Yoon issued a joint statement announcing the signing of the Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula.
“The presidents reaffirmed their commitments in the U.S.-ROK Washington Declaration and highlighted that any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the ROK will be met with a swift, overwhelming and decisive response,” it said.
DPRK is short for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. ROK refers to South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea.
Cheong Seong-Chang, a security strategy expert at the Sejong Institute and a strong advocate of South Korea’s own nuclear armament, said the new nuclear guideline is significant progress that fundamentally changes the way the allies will respond to a nuclear threat from North Korea.
“The problem is, the only thing that will give South Korea full confidence is a promise from the U.S. of an immediate nuclear retaliation in the event of nuclear use by the North, but that is simply impossible,” Cheong said.
“That is the inherent limitation of nuclear deterrence,” he said, adding whether the nuclear guideline will survive a change in U.S. administration is also questionable.
Yoon’s office said the guideline itself is classified.
North Korea has openly advanced its nuclear weapons policy by codifying their use in the event of perceived threat against its territory and enshrining the advancement of nuclear weapons capability in the constitution last year.
Earlier this year, it designated South Korea as its “primary foe” and vowed to annihilate its neighbor for colluding with the United States to wage war against it, in a dramatic reversal of peace overtures they made in 2018.
Both Seoul and Washington deny any aggressive intent against Pyongyang but say they are fully prepared to counter any aggression by the North and have stepped up joint military drills in recent months.
Yoon reaffirmed South Korea’s support for Ukraine, pledging to double its contribution to a NATO trust fund from the $12 million it provided in 2024, his office said. The fund enables short-term non-lethal military assistance and long-term capability-building support, NATO says.
It made no mention of any direct military support for Ukraine. Yoon’s office has said it was considering weapons supply for Kyiv, reversing its earlier policy of limiting its assistance to humanitarian in nature.
South Korea orders ‘Star Wars’ lasers to blast Northern drones out of the sky
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side
South Korea has commenced an effort to shoot drones out of the sky using lasers – and has named it the “Star Wars project”.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/korea_star_wars/
Singapore’s banks to ditch texted one-time passwords
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Accessibility be damned, preventing phishing is the priority
After around two decades of allowing one-time passwords (OTPs) delivered by text message to assist log ins to bank accounts in Singapore, the city-state will abandon the authentication technique.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/singapore_banks_fight_phishing/
SoftBank buys struggling UK AI chipmaker Graphcore
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Potential for combo with Arm tantalizes
Japan’s SoftBank, which owns CPU designer Arm, has acquired UK chip house Graphcore for an unspecified sum.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/softbank_acquires_graphcore/
COC supporters question Van Hook’s dismissal, college’s future
date: 2024-07-12, from: The Signal
Supporters of College of the Canyons said they were left asking questions after learning that Dianne Van Hook is set to be removed from her position as chancellor of COC. […]
The post COC supporters question Van Hook’s dismissal, college’s future appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/coc-supporters-question-van-hooks-dismissal-colleges-future/
@Dave Winer’s linkblog (date: 2024-07-12, from: Dave Winer’s linkblog)
Who’s doing the best election journalism? Send links.
https://dangillmor.com/2024/07/11/whos-doing-the-best-election-journalism-send-links/
China’s APT41 crew adds a stealthy malware loader and fresh backdoor to its toolbox
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Meet DodgeBox, son of StealthVector
Chinese government-backed cyber espionage gang APT41 has very likely added a loader dubbed DodgeBox and a backdoor named MoonWalk to its malware toolbox, according to cloud security service provider Zscaler’s ThreatLabz research team.…
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/china_apt41_malware/
NATO, Pacific partners strengthen ties at summit
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
washington — NATO set out Thursday to deepen relations with key Indo-Pacific partners, meeting with leaders from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea a day after all 32 NATO allies called out China for its support of Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine in a sternly worded communique.
During a working session, NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners strengthened plans and developed strategies to face growing threats in the Pacific region, including North Korean missile launches and China’s steady stream of technology and raw materials to Russia that have allowed President Vladimir Putin to replace his losses on the battlefield.
U.S. officials said the Indo-Pacific partners’ attendance sent a message to China that democratic alliances will stand up for the rule of law, no matter where an aggressor tries to break it.
“NATO also recognizes that threats from the Indo-Pacific, whether it’s the DPRK [North Korea] or the PRC [China] supporting Russia in their aggression against Ukraine, we cannot avoid,” Jason Israel, National Security Council senior director for defense policy, Israel told VOA.
In a final communique signed by all 32 allies, NATO called China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war and urged Beijing to cease its support.
“The PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the leaders wrote.
They also expressed concerns about Beijing’s space capabilities and nuclear arsenal.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday told reporters that “China is propping up Russia’s war economy” and “increas[ing] the threat Russia holds to Europe and NATO security.”
“China provides dual-use equipment, microelectronics and a lot of other tools which are enabling Russia to build the missiles, to build bombs, to build the aircraft, to build the weapons they’re using to attack Ukraine,” he added.
Asked by VOA whether the statement was a strong enough message to deter China from continuing to support Russia, Stoltenberg replied in the news conference that Wednesday’s declaration was “the strongest message that NATO allies have ever sent on China’s contributions to Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine.”
Some allies on Thursday cautioned the alliance against using the narrowly worded communique as a springboard to make NATO appear “anti-China.”
“NATO is a defense alliance. … We can’t organize it into an anti-China bloc,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told Hungarian state television on the sidelines of the summit.
However, defense expert Bradley Bowman, the senior director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power, said calling out China was long overdue for the bloc.
“Europeans are dying in Europe in a war of aggression from the Kremlin with the support of Iran, North Korea and China, period,” he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said NATO must counter Russia’s ramping up of defense production — made possible by help from China, North Korea and Iran — by continuing to invest more in Ukraine’s and NATO’s own defense production.
“We cannot allow the alliance to fall behind,” Biden said.
China insists that it does not provide military aid to Russia, despite maintaining strong trade ties with Moscow.
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian accused NATO of “breaching its boundary, expanding its mandate, reaching beyond its defense zone and stoking confrontation.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/nato-pacific-partners-strengthen-ties-at-summit/7695059.html
Dianne Van Hook Placed on Administrative Leave
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
After meeting in closed session on Wednesday, July 10, the Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees announced its unanimous decision to place Chancellor Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook on administrative leave, effective Monday, July
https://scvnews.com/dianne-van-hook-placed-on-administrative-leave-2/
Half a million Houston-area homes, businesses still won’t have power into next week
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
HOUSTON — About half a million Houston-area homes and businesses will still be without electricity next week, the city’s largest utility said Thursday, stoking the frustration of hot and weary residents and leading a top state official to call the pace of recovery from Hurricane Beryl “not acceptable.”
Jason Ryan, executive vice president of CenterPoint Energy, said power has been restored to more than 1 million homes and businesses since Beryl made landfall in Texas on Monday. And the company expects to get hundreds of thousands of more customers back online by Sunday. But many more will wait much longer.
“We know that we still have a lot of work to do,” Ryan said during a meeting of the Texas Public Utility Commission, the state’s utility regulation agency. “We will not stop the work until it is done.”
Ryan said that the prolonged outages into next week would be concentrated along the Gulf Coast, close to where Beryl came ashore.
During a news conference Thursday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pushed CenterPoint to work faster to relieve residents who have been without power for days and have been forced to seek air conditioning in community cooling centers and meals from food and water distribution points.
Compounding their discomfort was a new band of rainstorms that swept through the Houston area Thursday. The rain provided brief relief from the heat before temperatures were expected to creep back above 32 Celsius over the weekend.
“Folks, that is not acceptable,” that half a million customers could still be without power a week after the storm, said Patrick, who is acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is in Asia on an economic development trip.
Patrick and Abbott have both promised that the state will investigate the storm response. Texas has dealt with several major storms over the past two decades.
“We are always going to have big storms in this area. … We have to be sure they were prepared as they should have been,” Patrick said. “It’s a terrible situation for people who are in this heat.”
Patrick and Abbott also sparred with the White House over the timing of requests for federal declarations for the area, whether they would delay help for storm cleanup and other emergency expenses.
The Category 1 hurricane — the weakest type — knocked out power to around 2.7 million customers after it made landfall, according to PowerOutage.us.
Residents have been frustrated that such a relatively weak storm could cause such disruption at the height of summer.
Some have criticized the utility and state and city officials as not ready for the storm, the slow restoration process, and that CenterPoint’s online map has been woefully inaccurate, sometimes showing entire neighborhoods as restored when they were still without power.
The company acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it brought in to help the recovery were not in the Houston area when the storm arrived. Initial forecasts had the storm blowing ashore much farther south along the Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Mexico border, before it headed toward Houston.
Ryan said the vast majority of outages were caused by falling trees and tree limbs, and workers had to conduct damage surveys on some 13,700 kilometers of power lines.
Beryl has been blamed for at least eight U.S. deaths — one each in Louisiana and Vermont, and six in Texas. Earlier, 11 died in the Caribbean.
The storm’s lingering impact for many in Texas, however, was the wallop to the power supply that left much of the nation’s fourth-largest city sweltering.
Mallary Cohee said her duplex in New Caney, about 48 kilometers north of Houston, has been without power since Monday. She said her “little country neighborhood” is a “hot mess” of downed trees, so she’s staying at a Houston hotel.
Cohee said she initially felt she could withstand the lack of air conditioning because she managed to get by without it in summer while serving a two-year prison sentence.
“I thought, ‘I can do this. I can ride it. If I can do time with no heat, no AC in there, I could possibly make it,’” Cohee said. “But it’s a whole different ballgame when you don’t even have a fan to plug in.”
Clean water was also becoming an issue. More than 160 boil water notices were in effect across the area, and more than 100 wastewater treatment plants were offline Thursday, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
The Texas Hospital Association said a “vast majority” of hospitals in the area are dealing with some kind of issue caused by Beryl, including water and wind damage, power and internet connection problems, staffing shortages or transportation problems.
Carrie Kroll, the association’s vice president of advocacy, public policy and political strategy, said hospitals are getting an “extremely high” number of people coming to emergency departments with symptoms of heat stroke and injuries from cleaning up debris.
By Wednesday night, hospitals had already sent more than 100 patients who couldn’t be released to homes with no power to a Houston sports and event complex with an area set up to hold up to 250, Office of Emergency Management spokesman Brent Taylor said.
Trump lawyers lay out case for reversing hush money conviction
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
new york — Donald Trump’s lawyers on Thursday said Manhattan prosecutors improperly relied on evidence of the former U.S. president’s official acts in securing his conviction on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.
In a court filing dated July 10 but made public on Thursday, defense lawyers said the guilty verdict should be set aside following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
They said evidence of official acts that were improperly shown to the jury included Trump’s conversations with former White House aide Hope Hicks and some of his Twitter posts while he was in office.
“The use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution,” defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote. “The jury’s verdicts must be vacated.”
Justice Juan Merchan this month delayed Trump’s sentencing by two months after defense lawyers said the justices’ July 1 ruling that presidents cannot face criminal charges over official acts meant prosecutors should not have shown evidence from Trump’s time in the White House at trial.
They said that meant the Manhattan jury’s May 30 guilty verdict in the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president could not stand.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office have until July 24 to respond. They have previously called Trump’s arguments meritless but agreed to push back the sentencing.
Legal experts said Trump faces steep odds of getting the hush money conviction overturned because much of the case involves conduct before his presidency and the evidence from his time in the White House has more to do with private conduct.
The Supreme Court’s ruling stemmed from a separate case Trump faces on federal charges involving his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. It all but ensured Trump would not face trial in that case before the November 5 election.
Trump’s lawyers are also seeking a pause in a third criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents because of the ruling. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In the hush money case, Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to remain quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump. Prosecutors say the payment was designed to boost his presidential campaign in 2016, when he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The Supreme Court’s decision said evidence of a president’s official acts cannot be used in a prosecution on private matters.
Merchan has said he will decide on Trump’s arguments by September 6. If the conviction is upheld, Trump will be sentenced on September 18, less than seven weeks before the election.
Landfill announces nearly $1M in relief; residents question eligibility
date: 2024-07-12, from: The Signal
Chiquita Canyon Landfill released the latest numbers from its community relief fund Thursday and announced several more in-person meetings to help residents, but the landfill is still taking heat from […]
The post Landfill announces nearly $1M in relief; residents question eligibility appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.
https://signalscv.com/2024/07/landfill-announces-nearly-1m-in-relief-residents-question-eligibility/
Biden rejects calls to quit the race, vows to ‘finish the job because so much is at stake’
date: 2024-07-12, from: VOA News USA
washington — At his first solo news conference in eight months, U.S. President Joe Biden spent most of an hour responding to questions about the growing movement within his own Democratic Party to get him to step aside because of concerns he may be in cognitive decline.
“I’ve taken three significant and intense neurological exams” as recently as February, Biden said. “They say I’m in good shape.”
If any of his doctors “think I should have a neurological exam again, I’ll do it,” he said.
Aging “creates a little bit of wisdom,” added Biden, who is 81, maintaining he could handle the stress of the job for another term.
The president was asked what happened to his promise during the 2020 campaign to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation of Democrats, which was interpreted at the time as indicating he would not run again in 2024.
Biden replied, “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited, in terms of the economy, our foreign policy and domestic division.”
He also said if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second term, American democracy would be imperiled.
In his responses to questions from about a dozen reporters, Biden touted his accomplishments in handling foreign crises and the economy. But what will remain in the headlines after his latest public remarks will be his response to the biggest crisis he currently faces, which comes from within his own party.
Asked if he would stay in the race if his team presented data indicating Vice President Kamala Harris had a better chance to defeat Trump, the president said he would fight on unless his aides told him “there’s no way you can win.” He then dramatically whispered from the lectern: “No poll says that.”
“I think it was a good day for Mr. Biden, the best day he’s had in quite some time. Will it change the course of the stream, or will it just be a stone in the stream that diverts the current without fundamentally changing its course? I don’t know,” William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and who served as deputy assistant for domestic policy to President Bill Clinton, told VOA.
There were a couple of gaffes during the nearly hourlong event.
He referred to Harris as “Vice President Trump” before saying he had picked the former California senator as his running mate twice because she’s ready to step in as president.
At another point, Biden said, “I’m taking the advice of my commander-in-chief,” apparently referring to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As president, Biden himself is the commander-in-chief.
Calls for Biden to drop out have expanded beyond at least 16 Democratic Party members of the House. The prominent actor George Clooney on Wednesday, in an opinion piece in The New York Times, called on Biden to be a hero for democracy again by dropping out of the rematch against the Republican former president.
Clooney, who last month hosted the single largest fundraiser supporting any Democrat ever, said the candidate who appeared at that event was not the Joe Biden of 2016 or 2020, but “the same man we all witnessed at the debate” against Trump on June 27.
Even many of the president’s most prominent supporters have characterized that debate as a disaster for the incumbent. White House and campaign officials have repeatedly insisted that it was just “a bad night” for the veteran politician.
Hours before Thursday’s news conference, introducing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy at a NATO event, Biden announced to the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” referring to the Russian leader who is waging a war against neighbor Ukraine.
“Going to beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy. I am so focused on beating Putin,” Biden said while correcting himself. He made light of that mistake when asked about it at the news conference.
Biden’s signature mix-ups were reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s White House Rose Garden welcoming in 1982 for Liberian President Samuel Doe. Reagan introduced him as “Chairman Moe.”
In a debate two years later with the Democratic Party nominee, Walter Mondale, Reagan appeared lost for words and fumbled with his notes, but he went on in November of 1984 to capture a second term with a landslide victory over Mondale.
Reagan announced in 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease but in the years after his death in 2004, one of his sons and some former officials acknowledged there were clear signs of the president’s cognitive decline in his second term.
Top officials at the United Auto Workers union met on Thursday to discuss their concerns about Biden’s candidacy, the Reuters news agency reported, attributing the information to three sources familiar with the matter.
The 400,000-member union endorsed the Democratic Party incumbent in January. It is especially influential in industrial states, including the swing state of Michigan, which pollsters consider a must-win for Biden if he hopes to be reelected.
“I know he can win Michigan,” Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow said of Biden and her home state after the president’s senior advisers earlier Thursday briefed Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill.
More Democrats held off making public assessments of their incumbent’s suitability for a second term until after Thursday evening’s presidential news conference and the end of the NATO summit, which Biden hosted in Washington.
Immediately after the press event concluded, another Democratic Party congressman – Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee – added his voice to the rising chorus expressing a loss of confidence in Biden’s ability to win reelection.
“The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism,” Himes said in a statement. “I no longer believe that is Joe Biden.”
After Himes’ statement was released, another Democratic congressman, Scott Peters of California, also called for Biden to exit the race.
“The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course. My conscience requires me to speak up,” said Peters in a statement.
Referring to Biden’s several verbal stumbles at the news conference, NPR Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon put it this way in a social media posting while Biden was still talking: “Here’s the problem: even if [Biden’s] verbal slips are quickly corrected and totally understandable, people are listening for them now. Even scoring and numbering them. What used to be dismissed and understood is certainly heard differently.”
The president, in response to one reporter on Thursday, said there are others in his party who could beat Trump as well, but this close to next month’s Democratic Party nominating convention and November’s election, “it would be hard to start from scratch.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-forcefully-declares-he-s-staying-in-reelection-race-/7695034.html
Progress Is in Flight to Reduce Santa Barbara Airport’s Impacts
date: 2024-07-12, from: Santa Barbara Indenpent News
Goleta and Santa Barbara to collaborate on solutions to noise issues.
The post Progress Is in Flight to Reduce Santa Barbara Airport’s Impacts appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.
‘Gay furry hackers’ say they’ve disbanded after raiding Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: The Register (UK I.T. News)
Ultra-conservative org funnily enough not ready to turn the other cheek
After claiming to break into a database belonging to The Heritage Foundation, and then leaking 2GB of files belonging to the ultra-conservative think tank, the hacktivist crew SiegedSec says it has disbanded. …
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/gay_furry_hackers_2025/
Bill Miranda | Creativity in Every Corner
date: 2024-07-12, from: SCV New (TV Station)
Santa Clarita is known, not only for its scenic open spaces and family-friendly community, but also for its commitment to nurturing the arts and fostering a thriving, dynamic environment where creativity can flourish
https://scvnews.com/bill-miranda-creativity-in-every-corner/
Request for Meetings
date: 2024-07-12, updated: 2024-07-12, from: Tom Kellog blog
Are you a decision maker? I would love to talk to you about your posture in regards to AI. Also contact me if you want to know what I find out.