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Egyesült Államok - United States
2016. III. 30. A Pentagon jelentette be, hogy egy páncélos dandárt telepít Kelet-Európába, a dandár várhatóan 2017 februárjáig megérkezik, bár azt nem közölték, hogy melyik országba. Az új dandár a legmodernebb felszereléseket kapja majd, többek között 250 tankot, ezeket szükség esetén más európai régiókban is használhatják. Az egységet kilenchavonta váltják majd. A kelet-európaival együtt háromra nő az Európában állomásozó amerikai dandárok száma. (Forrás: Index)
March 30, 2016 The Associated Press news agency willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany, submitting to the regime’s restrictive rulings on the freedom of the press and providing it with images from its photo archives to be used in its anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda machine, a new report reveals. When Hitler’s National Socialists rose to power in 1933, all international news agencies but the US-based AP were forced to leave Germany. The AP continued to operate in the Third Reich until 1941, when the United States joined World War II. According to German historian Scharnberg, the world’s biggest news agency was only allowed to remain in Germany because it signed a deal with the regime. For example Der Untermensch (The Subhuman), a 52-page SS pamphlet used images taken by the Associated Press (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin). It is possible to argue that the AP’s agreement with the Nazis allowed the West a peek into a repressive society that may otherwise have been entirely hidden from view. Instead of printing pictures of the days-long Lviv pogroms with its thousands of Jewish victims, the American press was only supplied with photographs showing the victims of the Soviet police and ‘brute’ Red Army war criminals. Which events were made visible and which remained invisible in AP’s supply of pictures followed German interests and the German narrative of the war. (Source: TimesOfIsrael): http://tinyurl.com/hapmmhs
March 29, 2016 Engineers and meteorologists from the Desert Research Institute, Drone America, and AviSight Nevada have joined forces to create the first autonomous cloud seeding platform - using drones to control the weather. They used a DAx8 drone, which can carry heavier payloads thanks to its eight rotors, and successfully completed flare tests in late January 2016. (Source: TechRadar)
March 29 A device called Thync promises to help users activate their body's “natural state of energy or calm” — for a retail price of a mere $199. The latest wearable tech is about hacking your brain. THYNC and Muse are two wearable headbands that use electrical nerve stimulation and an EEG respectively to read your mind. THYNC looks to alters your mood, while Muse reads your thoughts to help in meditation. These gadgets claim to be able to make you have more willpower, think more creatively and even jump higher. One day, their makers say, the technology may even succeed in delivering on the holy grail of emotions: happiness. They involve stimulating key regions of the brain — with currents or magnetic fields — to affect emotions and physical well-being. It isn’t too different from how electroshock therapy works to counter certain mental illnesses and how deep-brain stimulation smooths motion disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Indeed, recent studies have looked at the technique as a possible treatment for stroke, autism and anorexia. The companies claim the stimuli they utilize are so weak that the products shouldn't be considered medical devices and subject to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. To date, the agency hasn't intervened. All this has unnerved many neuroscience experts, who worry about putting something that tinkers with the brain in the hands of naive consumer masses. Zaghloul, who runs one of the brain labs at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said that even if the devices work as advertised — which is a big if, he stressed — there are also concerns about how they account for individual variability in brain structure and whether enhancing one area of the brain could negatively affect another. No one knows the long-term consequences. Writing in the Journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, one group of researchers argued that “‘non-invasive’ brain stimulation” may sound benign, but it comes with risks as severe as when a body is opened up in surgery. Sabotage by hackers could change a code to stimulate undesirable characteristics such as anxiety, fear and aggression. Such concerns are legitimate. (Source: TheWashingtonPost): http://tinyurl.com/jjvuh2n
Mar 29, 2016 Robots are coming for your job. The so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution has found its first victims: blue-collar workers and the poor. Human workers of all stripes pound the table claiming desperately that they're irreplaceable. Bus drivers. Bartenders. Financial advisors. Speechwriters. Firefighters. Umpires. Even doctors and surgeons. Meanwhile, corporations and investors are spending billions — at least $8.5 billion last year on AI, and $1.8 billion on robots — toward making all those jobs replaceable. Some professors argue that we could see 50% unemployment in 30 years. A report from the 2016 World Economic Forum calculated that the technological changes underway likely will destroy 7.1 million jobs around the world by 2020, with only 2.1 million replaced. One way to cushion the economic blow is to reclaim something from the technology realm that we've been giving away for free: our personal data. Companies that sell personal data should pay a percentage of the resulting revenue into a Data Mining Royalty Fund that would provide annual payments to U.S. citizens. This payment scheme would start with traditional data — customer, financial and social media information sold to advertisers — but would also extend to future forms of data like our facial expressions and other biometrics. It's about taking steps to guarantee some minimum income to your family, or the one down the block, before any of us are automated into obsolescence. (Source: LosAngelesTimes)
March 25, 2016 The US State Department has facilitated $33 billion worth of weapons sales to its Arab Gulf allies since May 2015. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have received weapons including ballistic missile defense capabilities, attack helicopters, advanced frigates and anti-armor missiles and 4,500 precision-guided munitions. Kuwait and Qatar have been waiting approvals to purchase 40 F/A-18 Super Hornets and 72 F-15 Silent Eagles to Qatar. Qatar was the largest customer of the United States for foreign military sales in 2014, purchasing more than $10 billion in advanced military equipment such as Apache helicopters, Patriot missile defense systems and Javelin missiles. Qatar also purchased eight C-17s and four C-130Js via direct commercial sale that year. (Source: DefenseNews)
6 3 24 Tay tweets: Microsoft AI chatbot posts racist messages about loving Hitler, used wildly racist slurs against black people and hating Jews. The messages started out harmless, if bizarre, but have descended into outright racism — before the bot was shut down. “bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now,” it wrote in one tweet. “ trump is the only hope we've got.” When Microsoft launched “Tay Tweets”, it said that the account would get more clever the more it was used. That appears to be a reference to machine learning technology that has been built into the account. But many of those people tweeting at it appear to have been attempting to prank the robot by forcing it to learn offensive and racist language. The robot’s learning mechanism appears to take parts of things that have been said to it and throw them back into the world. (Source: TheIndependent)
March 23, 2016 Sea level has been falling on the Atlantic seaboard for the past six years. Our top scientists say that Manhattan will be underwater no later than 2018, but this appears unlikely. (Source: WordPress / StevenGoddard/): http://tinyurl.com/j4bgddy
March 22, 2016 State Department issues travel alert "to and throughout Europe". The Obama administration stepped up security at major transit hubs across the country after Tuesday's airport and subway bombings in Brussels, as top U.S. intelligence officials warned of the risk for copycat attacks at home. The Transportation Security Administration would deploy additional security at major airports and rail stations in different cities. Officials also reviewed additional security measures for travelers from Belgium, among more than three dozen countries whose citizens generally don't need a visa to enter the U.S. "Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation". Officials advised U.S. citizens to "exercise vigilance" in public places or on mass transportation and to take "particular caution" during religious events or large events. The Travel Alert expires on June 20, 2016. Several Americans were injured, including an Air Force officer, a lieutenant colonel, service member stationed at Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands and his wife and four children who were at the airport. Mormon church officials said three of its missionaries from Utah were seriously injured in the blasts and were hospitalized. Following the attacks, U.S. European Command announced new prohibitions on unofficial military and Defense Department employee travel to Brussels "until further notice." Official travel to the NATO hub in the city now requires approval. The Homeland Security Department urged Americans to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities. Rep. Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the threat of copycat or lone-wolf attackers may get worse as the Islamic State faces increased military pressure by the U.S.-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria. "In terms of targets, this may be one of the most dangerous phases," Schiff told. He said the attackers operate with "significant, real autonomy when it comes to when and where to attack." The early indications, he said, suggest the perpetrators were of North African background and may have been Belgian or French citizens. "Our impression has been from our discussions that although the agencies within the countries are working more closely together, between the countries there is still distrust and reluctance to share information" - Sen. King, I-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence panel who was traveling in Europe with other lawmakers focused on combatting terrorism, told. (Source: 6abc): http://tinyurl.com/h34xwc9
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http://tinyurl.com/jawlj7y (Source: Twitter/ StateDepartment)
March 22, 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner Clinton is pushing back on Trump's claim that he could close the nation's borders after a terrorist attack, remarks that follow a series of bombings in Brussels. "It's unrealistic to say that we're going to completely shut down our borders to everyone" - Clinton said. Clinton invoked her experience as secretary of State, saying that in her dealings with Europeans they were often "reluctant" to employ tougher security measures. But she argued they were necessary to prevent future attacks. I've talked about a visa system and a passenger name record system." Clinton also encouraged support for NATO a day after Trump suggested the U.S. reduce funding for the organization and rethink its involvement. (Source: TheHill): http://tinyurl.com/z8ov9d6
March 21, 2016 Trump questions need for NATO, outlines noninterventionist foreign policy. "NATO is costing us a fortune" - discussing some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." The meeting at The Post covered a range of issues, including media libel laws, violence at his rallies, climate change, NATO and the U.S. presence in Asia. "We have $19 trillion in debt. We’re sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it’s a bubble that if it breaks, it’s going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country" - he said. He added: "I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up. We rebuild it three times and yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education because we can’t build in our own country. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities." For the first time, Trump also listed members of a team chaired by Sen. Sessions (R-Ala.) that is counseling him on foreign affairs and helping to shape his policies: former Army lieutenant general Kellogg, an executive vice president at CACI International, a Virginia-based intelligence and information technology consulting firm with clients around the world who worked as chief operating officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq. Page, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and now the managing partner of Global Energy Capital, is a longtime energy industry executive who rose through the ranks at Merrill Lynch around the world before founding his current firm. He previously was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he focused on the Caspian Sea region and the economic development in former Soviet states. Papadopoulos, an oil and energy consultant, who directs an international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice and worked as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Phares a counterterrorism expert, has an academic background, teaching at the National Defense University and Daniel Morgan Academy in Washington, and has advised members of Congress and appeared as a television analyst discussing terrorism and the Middle East. Schmitz, who served as inspector general at the Defense Department during the early years of President Bush’s administration and has worked for Blackwater Worldwide. He questioned the United States’ continued involvement in NATO and, on the subject of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, said America’s allies are "not doing anything." "Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we’re doing all of the lifting," Trump said. "They’re not doing anything. And I say: 'Why is it that Germany’s not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of Ukraine, why aren’t they dealing? Why are we always the one that’s leading, potentially the third world war with Russia.' Trump said that U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years. "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money." Trump sounded a similar note in discussing the U.S. presence in the Pacific. He questioned the value of massive military investments in Asia and wondered aloud whether the United States still was capable of being an effective peacekeeping force there. "We’re constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games — we’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing." He added, "I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country, and we are a poor country now. We’re a debtor nation." Trump cast China as a leading economic and geopolitical rival and said the United States should toughen its trade alliances to better compete. "We have rebuilt China. They have drained so much money out of our country that they’ve rebuilt China. Without us, you wouldn’t see the airports and the roadways and the bridges."
A Föld országai
2016. III. 31. Puskás vagy Ronaldo a világ legjobb focistája ? Szavazó verseny. Lásd: országok szerint A verseny állása ma: összességében Puskásra 68%, Ronaldora 32% szavazott. (Forrás: PollCaster): http://tinyurl.com/z4v4fnu
Globalization
March 25, 2016 "Terrorism is spreading and the possibility of using nuclear material cannot be excluded" - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Amano told. But he said that a far likelier risk was a "dirty bomb". Amano's comments came before a summit of around 50 leaders in Washington on March 31-April 1 on ensuring that nuclear material in the world's roughly 1,000 atomic facilities are secured; part of a process begun by US President Obama in a speech in Prague in 2009 and follows similar gatherings in Seoul in 2012 and The Hague in 2014. This is a device using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material other than uranium or plutonium. Such material can be found in small quantities in universities, hospitals and other facilities the world over, often with little security. "Dirty bombs will be enough to (drive) any big city in the world into panic" - Amano said. Since the mid-1990s, almost 2,800 incidents of illicit trafficking, "unauthorised possession" or loss of nuclear materials have been recorded in an IAEA database. A vital step would be the entry into force of the arcane-sounding but important 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM). (Source: Yahoo)
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