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Magyarország
2018. VI. 30. Június 20-i létszámadatokat kért egy nappal későbbi emailjében tucatnyi közintézménytől az Emberi Erőforrások Minisztériuma személyügyi főosztályvezetője. Június 21-től létszámstopot vezetett be az EMMI a tárcához tartozó számos közintézménynél. A tucatnyi címzett között található egyebek mellett az Oktatási Hivatal, az Országos Mentőszolgálat, az Állami Egészségügyi Ellátó Központ, múzeumok, például a Ludwig Múzeum és a Szépművészeti Múzeum, színházak, így az Opera és az Operett, az Országos Széchényi Könyvtár vagy a Kopp Mária Intézet a Népesedésért és a Családokért. (Forrás: Átlátszó)
20180626 Tíz napja a Marosvásárhelyen megjelenő Cuvantul Liber című napilapban minden korábbinál élesebb támadást kapott kutatócsoportunk, amelyben működésünket egyszerűen Románia leselkedő "veszélyként" azonosították. Erre válaszul az alábbi (francia nyelvű) levelet küldtük Lădariu főszerkesztőnek: Tisztelt Főszerkesztő Úr, az Ön által szerkesztett Cuvantul Liber című lap internetes oldalán 2018. június 14-én olyan cikk jelent meg Hajdu tollából, amely súlyos, és alapjaiban igaztalan vádakkal illeti a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia által indított Lendület-Trianon 100 Kutatócsoportot. Mint azt a román nyilvánosságban több helyen is elmondtuk (mint például a Dilema Vechében tavaly novemberben), a Trianon 100 tudományos projekt, csaknem két tucat, különböző tudományterületekről érkező tudós dolgozik az első világháború végének és a békeszerződéseknek új típusú megvilágításán. Erről egyébként a cikk szerzője is tájékozódhatott volna a kutatócsoport trianon100.hu oldalán. Hamis az a beállítás, hogy a kutatócsoport munkája Románia ellen irányulna - sőt reményeink szerint román tudósokkal is együtt tudunk dolgozni egyes területek feltárásában. Egyenesen felháborító az az állítás, amely szerint a kutatócsoport aláírásokat gyűjtene a trianoni békeszerződés ellen. Semmi ilyesmivel nem foglalkozunk, ez a kijelentés nevetséges. Azt pedig, hogy a cikk írója "veszélynek" kiáltja ki egy tudományos csoport tevékenységét Románia számára, olyan nyílt fenyegetés, amellyel a korábban is felbukkanó tendenciózus félreinterpretálás új szintre lépett. Felkérem Főszerkesztő Urat, hogy a jövőben tartózkodjon a hasonló alaptalan és rágalmazó cikkek közlésétől, és szerzőit kérje fel az alapvető újságírói normák betartására. Üdvözlettel: Ablonczy, az MTA-Lendület Trianon 100 Kutatócsoport vezetője. (Forrás: FaceBook)
2018. VI. 25. Több száz Békés megyei jár át naponta Romániába zömében gyári munkára, ehhez sokszor 80-90 kilométert kell utazni. Aki csak a normális napi 8 órát dolgozza le, az is megkeres nettó 130-140 ezer forintot. Három műszakos a munka, a műszakpótlékot kifizetik, korlátlanul lehet túlórázni, egy túlóráért nettó ezer forint körül adnak. Aradon hatalmas és zsúfolt az ipari zóna. Az E68-as európai főút elkerülő szakaszán könnyűszerkezetes üzemcsarnokok, ameddig a szem ellát. Ezek a cégek zömmel olasz és német tulajdonban vannak, a nagy, nemzetközi autógyáraknak szállítanak be. A Leoni munkásbuszának végállomása például Sarkad, ahol szinte megszűnt a foglalkoztatás, amióta tönkretették a téeszt, és bezárták a cukorgyárat. Az ipari munkahelyek zöme Gyulán is elveszett. A fürdőhöz kapcsolódó idegenforgalom sokaknak ad ugyan munkát, de a régi gyárak ezres létszámainak a töredéke tud csak belőle megélni. A megterhelő körülmények ellenére sokaknak számít az állandó munka és a biztos fizetés. A legtöbbször azonban nem vonnak le a pénzből semmit egészség- vagy nyugdíjbiztosításra. Sokaknak pedig a bedőlt devizahitel miatt kell Romániába ingázni, a magyarországi bérüket ugyanis egyből elszedné a behajtó. (Forrás: PiacProfit)
2018. VI. 21. Az Országos Bírósági Hivatal (OBH) I. Mátyás és az igazságszolgáltatás című kétnapos bíróságtörténeti konferenciájáról. Az uralkodó törvénykezéséről, a XV. század gazdasági jogalkotásáról és a krónikás irodalomról beszéltek. /video/ (Forrás: Bíróság): https://tinyurl.com/y28ngrh8
2018. VI. 21. A demokrácia 28. évében történt meg először, hogy levegyenek egy előadást a színről, csak mert egy pártlap munkáslevelezője azt túl buzisnak tartotta. A jelen kurzus számára életbevágó, hogy állandóan fenntartsa a hadiállapotot. Ezért kell harcolni a migránsok, Soros, az Unió, a CEU, legújabban a hajléktalanok, vagy épp az „áruló” bírák ellen. A kultúrharc ennek a része. Ezért megy neki a kormány az MTA kutatóintézeteinek, az Operaháznak, a múzeumoknak, még akkor is, ha részben az övéik vezetik. A belső ellenséggel való harc, szintén nem új keletű jelenség. Könnyű azt a képet kialakítani a szavazóikban, hogy a fővárosi értelmiség az állam pénzén, ferde, öncélú és perverz játékait játssza, és legfőbb ideje, hogy az állam rendet tegyen. Hiszen a legtöbben önhibájukon kívül távol vannak ettől a világtól, s a kormány nem is tesz semmit, hogy ez változzék. És itt van a felelőssége azoknak, akik – akár a rendszer kegyéből, akár a saját jogon, akár a kettő keverékéből – az intézmények élére kerültek. Rudas az MTA Társadalomtudományi Intézetének főigazgatója, aki egyrészt nyílt levélben megvédte munkatársait, egy másik kevésbé nyílt, de nyilvánosságra került levében pedig felajánlotta főnökének, hogy a kutatók majd heti két napot a kormány igényei szerint kutatnak. Ókovács az Operaház főigazgatója pedig egy újságcikkben leiskolázta a munkáslevelezőt, egy másikban már magyarázkodott, végül pedig meghajolt. (Forrás: hvg)
2018. VI. 21. Lovas (Forrás: ErdélyiNapló): https://tinyurl.com/ydh7at9u
Austria
June 25, 2018 Asgardia was founded just 20 months ago, and it already has about 200,000 citizens, a constitution and an elected parliament. It has a leader, Ashurbeyli, a Russian engineer, computer scientist and businessman. who was inaugurated yesterday. It wants to build up a population of 150 million within 10 years. It plans to set up “space arks” with artificial gravity in outer space where humans could live permanently. Asgardia - named after Asgard, a world in the sky in Norse mythology - says its citizens now live in more than 200 countries, outnumbering the United Nations’ 193 member states. Becoming a citizen online is free. Ashurbeyli said he intends to have satellites providing Internet access around the globe in five to seven years, space arks operating in 10 to 15 years, and finally to establish a permanent settlement on the moon within 25 years. Asgardians now pay an annual membership fee of 100 euros. (Source: Reuters)
Italy
Jun 24, 2018 Salvini wants to drastically reduce Italy's involvement. Italy's Interior Minister Salvini told foreign charities to back off and let Libya take care of rescue operations in the Mediterranean. "Italian ports are and will be closed to those who aid human traffickers," he said. Salvini has repeatedly accused the charities of being complicit with human smugglers operating in Libya. "These boats can forget about reaching Italy, I want to stop the business of trafficking and mafia," Salvini said. The Italian coastguard also sent a message to rescue boats operating in the Mediterranean informing them it would no longer be coordinating rescue operations in the Libya search and rescue area. "From now on, under the Solas Convention (Safety of life at Sea), captains who are at sea in the area near Libya will have to turn to the Tripoli Centre and the Libyan Coast Guard for help," the message said. (Source: DailyStar)
June 23, 2018 Italy says 'arrogant' France risks becoming 'No.1 enemy' on migration a day before European leaders convene in Brussels for a hastily arranged meeting on the divisive issue. In answer to comments by French President Macron, who said migration flows towards Europe had reduced compared with a few years ago, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Di Maio said Macron’s words showed he was out of touch with reality. Italy’s Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Salvini said his country had faced 650,000 arrivals by sea over the past four years, 430,000 asylum requests and the hosting of 170,000 “alleged refugees” for an overall cost of more than 5 billion euros. (Source: Reuters)
Jun 24, 2018 Salvini wants to drastically reduce Italy's involvement. Italy's Interior Minister Salvini told foreign charities to back off and let Libya take care of rescue operations in the Mediterranean. "Italian ports are and will be closed to those who aid human traffickers," he said. Salvini has repeatedly accused the charities of being complicit with human smugglers operating in Libya. "These boats can forget about reaching Italy, I want to stop the business of trafficking and mafia," Salvini said. The Italian coastguard also sent a message to rescue boats operating in the Mediterranean informing them it would no longer be coordinating rescue operations in the Libya search and rescue area. "From now on, under the Solas Convention (Safety of life at Sea), captains who are at sea in the area near Libya will have to turn to the Tripoli Centre and the Libyan Coast Guard for help," the message said. (Source: DailyStar)
European Union
Friday June 29, 2018 An emergency gathering Sunday by a group of leading European Union members, which was boycotted by Hungary and several other states, was meant to engineer at least a show of unity on migrant burden-sharing. Instead it showcased deep divisions, rendered all the more painful by Trump’s apparent glee over splintering of the EU and political schisms within member states that count among America’s closest allies. But a two-day EU summit that began Thursday brought more messy public acrimony, with Orbán and his partisans loudly spurning calls for migrant burden-sharing. Most observers believe that at most, the bloc may manage symbolic accord on tightening Europe’s external borders and steps such as creating incentives for third countries to dissuade migrants from trying to reach Europe’s shores. (Source: HeraldNet)
June 24, 2018 Unable to wait for full EU consensus, Merkel would go for faster measures. Sixteen of the EU’s 28 leaders held talks in Brussels today, ahead of a summit, the European Council, on June 28-29. “We know that at the European Council, unfortunately, we will not have a complete solution of the migration issue,” Merkel said on arriving at the meeting. There will be bilateral and trilateral agreements, how can we help each other - not always wait for all 28 members but think about what is important to whom,” she said. (Source: Reuters)
India
June 22, 2018 Despite laws aimed at curbing child marriage India is home to one-third of the roughly 700 million women worldwide who became wives before turning 18, according to Unicef data. A 2015-2016 national health survey found that more than one-quarter of Indian women ages 20-24 had been married before their 18th birthday. Under Indian law, married children can request an annulment up to two years after adulthood, which it defines as 18 for girls and 21 for boys. The provision is part of a 2006 act that imposes jail time and a fine of up to $1,500 for anyone caught participating in a child marriage. (Source: GulfNews)
Japan
25 June 2018 82-year-old Nagasaki 'escaped' civilisation in 1989 for life of solitude. He stayed on rarely visited Sotobanari island - even fishermen don't go there. But Japanese authorities moved him back to mainland after he was found 'weak'. (Source: DailyMail): https://tinyurl.com/y7mnkpe4
21 Jun 2018 A 64-year-old employee of the waterworks bureau in the western city of Kobe, was fined and reprimanded after he was found to have left his desk just three minutes before the start of his designated lunch break on 26 occasions over a seven-month period. Senior officials at the bureau then called a televised news conference, where they described the man’s conduct as “deeply regrettable” and bowed in apology. Last month, the lower house passed a bill that caps overtime at 100 hours a month in response to a rise in the number of employees dying from karoshi, or death from overwork. In 2016, the government said one in five employees were at risk of death from overwork. (Source: TheGuardian)
United States
June 30, 2018 The National Security Agency is deleting more than 685 million call records the government obtained since 2015 from telecommunication companies in connection with investigations, raising questions about the viability of the program. The NSA’s bulk collection of call records was initially curtailed by Congress after former NSA contractor Snowden leaked documents revealing extensive government surveillance. The law, enacted in June 2015, said that going forward, the data would be retained by telecommunications companies, not the NSA, but that the intelligence agency could query the massive database. Now the NSA is deleting all the information it collected from the queries. (Source: AP)
June 29, 2018 The U.S.ambassador to Estonia, Melville Jr., a career diplomat and member of the senior foreign service ranks, announced to friends that he was resigning amid a string of controversial comments President Trump made about U.S. allies in Europe. Melville was due to retire soon . “For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go,” he wrote, citing Trump’s reported comments in recent weeks that have unnerved U.S. allies. The resignation comes ahead of a pivotal NATO summit, where the United States’ closest historic allies fear that Trump will lambast them and further isolate Washington from its allies after heated disputes over trade, defense spending issues, and the U.S. exit from the Iran nuclear deal. Allies fear that the optics of Trump trashing allies in Brussels, followed by a meeting in Finland with Russian President Putin, will undercut an already anemic trans-Atlantic partnership. (Source: ForeignPolicy)
June 26, 2018 A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries, rejecting a challenge that it discriminated against Muslims or exceeded his authority. The 5-4 decision is a big victory for Trump on an issue that is central to his presidency, and the court’s first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy. (Source: AP)
June 24, 2018 At the Nevada Republican Party Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, President Trump said that people who enter the United States illegally should be sent back immediately to where they came from without any judicial process, likening them to invaders who are trying to “break into” the country. U.S. law does permit expedited deportations if an immigrant is apprehended within 160 km of the border and has been in the country for less than 14 days. Those seeking asylum must be granted a hearing. Under expedited removal proceedings, which are used most commonly at ports of entry, an immigration official can evaluate an immigrant’s claim and reject it with no involvement by an immigration judge or review board. (Source: Reuters)
June 22, 2018 Groundbreaking victory for Americans' privacy rights in the digital age. The Supreme Court decided whether prosecutors violated the Fourth Amendment by collecting a criminal suspect's cellphone location and movement data without a warrant. Historical GPS data presents an "even greater privacy risk" than real-time GPS monitoring. This decision will provide users with the confidence that the sensitive location data they share with innovative digital devices and services will only be disclosed to law enforcement with a warrant based on probable cause. (Source: cnet)
June 21, 2018 The National Security Agency has moved most of the mission data it collects, analyzes and stores into a classified cloud computing environment known as the Intelligence Community GovCloud. The IC GovCloud is a single integrated “big data fusion environment” that allows analysts to rapidly “connect the dots” across all NSA’s data sources. The productivity gains and the speed at which the analysts are able to put together insights and work higher-level problems has been really amazing. The backbone of the system is the same commercial hardware you might see in data centers owned by Facebook, Amazon or other industry titans. But that hardware is blended with NSA-developed custom software, exotic processing, high performance computing and other unique NSA intellectual property. The IC GovCloud is NSA’s creation - and centrally funded by the NSA - its basic services are available to the 16 other agencies that comprise the IC, including the Central Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. IC GovCloud is one of two major cloud initiatives across the IC. Four years ago, the CIA awarded a $600 million contract to Amazon Web Services to develop a commercial cloud environment for the IC agencies. Today, the Amazon-developed C2S provides utility computing services the IC. (Source: NextGov)
OPEC
June 22, 2018 OPEC ministers announced a deal that will increase oil supplies from the producer group. Producers agreed to start pumping more so that they are no longer overshooting the production limits they agreed to in November 2016. The agreement is likely to add around 600,000 to 800,000 barrels a day to the market, helping to tame oil prices that have soared to multi-year highs recently. Saudi Arabia faced the challenge of convincing a handful of reluctant producers including Iran, Iraq and Venezuela to support an output hike. (Source: CNBC).
Globalizáció Globalization
(2018. VI.) Bolygónk valódi sugárzási klímájáról. Az üvegházhatás problémájának egy alapjaiban új megközelítéséről (Forrás: Klímaszkeptikusok): https://tinyurl.com/y2bulnew
2018/06/29 Scientists have set up the Global Virome Project, backing from USAID, which has the ambitious target of identifying all the viruses in the world that could one day jump from animals to humans. It is estimated there are 1.67 million yet-to-be discovered viral species existing in animals and birds. Of these, it is thought between 600,000 and 800,000 have the potential to jump from animals to man. Later this year, virus hunters will make the first collections in China and Thailand. They will take samples of blood, saliva and faecal matter from wild animals and perform genomic sequencing to determine which viruses they are harbouring. If a new virus was found in a bat population, for example, and antibodies were found in people living around the area that would mean the virus had already made the jump. The most likely animal reservoirs for the next virus with pandemic potential are rodents, bats, small mammals and primates. These animals live close to human populations and are in west Africa, south east Asia and south America. The project will cost about $7 billion. The global cost of the 2002 -2003 SARS epidemic is estimated by the World Bank to have been $54 billion. (Source: TheTelegraph): https://tinyurl.com/y8e7trty
Space
06/26/18 Inflamed fears about China’s efforts to spy on the U.S. and to steal U.S. intellectual property, rising concerns over hackers using satellites to target US. It's a risk exacerbated by the growing number of aging satellite systems in circulation. While it is cheaper to leave old satellites in orbit rather than pulling them from space, the outdated systems are even easier targets for hacking. Just last week, security researchers at Symantec warned that a China-based cyber espionage group known as Thrip targeted satellite, telecom and defense companies in the United States and Southeast Asia. Thrip used malware to infect computers linked to the satellites in an attempt to seize control of them - efforts that suggest the group’s motivations could extend beyond spying and include “disruption,” according to Symantec. There is also concern that China and other foreign nations could wiggle into satellite systems now and remain embedded so that they are prepared to commandeer the systems in a time of war. Cyber experts and officials say they have not observed satellites being used for digital warfare. Russia-linked hacking groups have also previously been tied to satellite hacking campaigns. Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm, warned in a 2015 blog post that a sophisticated “Russian-speaking” hacking group known as Turla APT had intercepted the flow of downstream traffic coming from a satellite to an unencrypted PC. The firm, which described the group as “one the most advanced threat actors in the world,” said it has exhibited an “exquisite satellite-based command-and-control mechanism” that it can use as a base for launching cyberattacks. The concerns about satellite-focused hackers comes just months after the Federal Communications Commission granted Tesla Founder Musk’s space program, SpaceX, the right to “construct, deploy, and operate” a satellite system comprising of roughly 4,400 satellites. These satellites will be joining the satellites already up in space, which may already be decades old. (Source: TheHill)
June 23, 2018 3-D printing will be key to colonizing space. In the Made in Space headquarters at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California (NASA Research Park) the Archinaut is comprised of an industrial sized 3-D printer, cartridges full of plastics and alloys, and robotic arms programmed to assemble the big items extruded by the printer without any human supervision. All of the Archinaut's components are rugged enough to survive in microgravity and harsh conditions like lunar dust storms and extreme temperatures. The company plans to have the Archinaut launched and cranking out large items like trusses and reflectors for satellites within five years. Ultimately, the company aims to use Archinaut to build entire spacecraft, space stations and habitats in orbit that can help people get to the Moon and Mars leapfrogging between structures along the way. (Source: CNBC)
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