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Magyarország
2019. II. 18. Az ön által vezetett PIM-hez érkezik „pénz, paripa, fegyver”. Emellett, úgy tudni, megtartotta az erdélyi magyar nyelvű média felügyeletét: az 1,45 milliárd forint magyar állami forráshoz jutó Erdélyi Médiatér Egyesületet barátjára, Mohácsira bízta. Plusz az ön ideája, felségterülete a heti 260 ezer példányban, kormánylapok mellékleteként megjelenő irodalmi kiadvány, az általunk is emlegetett Előretolt Helyőrség, melynek kiadója, a Kárpát-medencei tehetséggondozó Nonprofit kft. tavaly 550 millió, idénre 1,4 milliárd forint közpénzt kapott. Birodalom, sok pénz. Ami a Kárpát-medencei tehetséggondozót illeti: az 1,45 milliárd 2018-ra és 2019-re a teljes működési költség, benne az ösztöndíjak, az oktatók bére, a könyvkiadás... Az Előretolt Helyőrség büdzséje ebből kétszáz-kétszázötvenmillió forint, ami a nyomdaköltséget és a terjesztést fedezi. (Forrás: 24)
2019. II. 11. Eötvös József Kutatóközpont néven új szervezeti egység jött létre február elsejétől a Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetemen. Koltay rektornak az intézmény munkatársaihoz intézett leveléből kiderül, hogy a központ vezetője Oberfrank, a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Kísérleti Orvostudományi Kutatóintézet ügyvezető igazgatója lesz. A Kutatóközpont keretében működik majd ezentúl egy Politika- és Államelmélet Kutatóintézet, ennek vezetője az MTA Filozófiai Intézetének éléről 2018. december 31-ével leköszönt Hörcher lenne. A Közép-Európai Kutatóintézetet Hatos történész vezetné, míg a Stratégiai Tanulmányok Intézetének élére Prőhle kerülne. Az egyetem emellett elindítja a Tisza István Programot, amelyre 6,3 milliárd forintot kapott 2019-re a kormánytól, a következő években ez az összeg beépül majd az intézmény költségvetésébe. (Forrás: hvg)
2019. II. 11. Szijjártó szerint a gazdasági után a politikai kapcsolatok is épülésnek indultak a Pompeo-val folytatott tárgyalását követően. A tárcavezető szerint mind a magyar, mind az amerikai kormány nemzetpolitikát folytat, így tudnak együttműködni például a bevándorlás ellen az ENSZ migrációs csomagjának elutasításával. (Fiorrás: Híradó / Kossuth): https://tinyurl.com/y6odnp24
Németország Germany
2019. II. 19. A német állam biztonságáért felelős alkotmányvédelmi hivatal novemberben leváltott elnöke tegnap este első alkalommal lépett a nyilvánosság elé - pártja, a Kereszténydemokrata Unió Kölnben tartott rendezvényén beszélt - és fejtette ki politikai véleményét. Maassen beláthatatlan következményekkel járó ballépésnek nevezte a határok megnyitását 2015-ben, kényszer-nyugdíjazását pedig kiváltképpen a baloldali média mesterkedésének tulajdonította. Utalt arra is, hogy a múlt évben elkövetett bűncselekmények közül 170 ezret migránsok hajtottak végre. A menekültként érkezett, de mindenre elszánt szélsőséges beállítottságú muszlimok száma időközben jóval kétezer fölé emelkedett, és mint több merényletkísérlet is bizonyította, köztük vannak olyanok is, akik nem riadnak vissza vegyi fegyverekkel történő támadásoktól sem. Elhibázottnak nevezte a menedékjog megadására vonatkozó hivatali eljárást és tétlenséget vetett a hatóságok szemére azzal kapcsolatban is, hogy képtelenek az immár csaknem negyedmillió kiutasított migráns tényleges kitoloncolására Németországból. (Forrás: Infostart)
2019. II. 17. AfD-s képviselő a Bundestagban /video/ (Forrás: YouTube): http://tinyurl.com/y33329hc
February 16, 2019 Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference, Chinese politburo member Yang spent much of his speech extolling the virtues of cooperation, international organizations and free trade, popular in Europe, and attacked the dangers of "protectionism," as well as “hegemony and power politics." He disputed Pence’s warnings that Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Co. would expose European 5G networks to the risk of espionage. Lavrov invited the EU to create an integrated economic space in Eurasia with Russia and echoed President Putin’s recent public endorsement of French-led plans to build a European army. Pence repeated his demand for Europe to fall in line with more aggressive U.S. policies toward Iran and accused the EU of undermining its efforts to isolate the government in Tehran by creating a vehicle to help investors avoid U.S. sanctions. Merkel had restated German support for the Iran nuclear deal only minutes before. She also appealed for the U.S. to consult its allies before any new decision on deployments in Afghanistan, where Germany has more than 1,000 troops. She said she was “shocked’’ by the idea that the U.S. would consider German cars a threat. Pence in his speech sought to show the U.S. hasn’t actually gone away and remains the unchallenged leader of the West. (Source: Bloomberg)
Románia
2019. II. 14. A folyó fizetési mérleg hiánya tavaly elérte a GDP 4,7%-át, miután 2017-hez képest 1,5 százalékpontos romlás következett be az egyenlegben. A külkereskedelmi termékforgalom egyenlegének hiánya elérte a GDP 7,3%-át, Fontos szerepet játszottak az elmúlt évek erőltetett közszféra-béremelései, illetve ezzel összhangban az egész gazdaságban tapasztalt dinamikus béremelkedés (az elmúlt három évben 10% feletti ütemben nőttek a reálbérek Romániában). A külföldi közvetlentőke-befektetések (FDI) összege 2018-ban gyakorlatilag a 2017-es összeg körüli értéken stagnált; ez a finanszírozási forrás nem hosszú távú, stratégiai célú befektetések formájában áramlik az országban (tehát nem FDI), hanem más, rövid lejáratú (spekulációs célú) források formájában. Portfólió-befektetések formájában beáramló (rövid távú) külső finanszírozási forrás egy feltörekvő piaci tőkekivonás esetén gyorsan menekülőre foghatja, amire az ország fizetőeszköze és az állampapírpiac is érzékenyen reagálhat. Amennyiben pedig a finanszírozás eladósodásból származik, az ország külső adóssága emelkedik tovább, ami folyamatosan egyre magasabb refinanszírozási igényt és ezzel együtt sérülékenységet is jelent. A helyzeten javít az államadósság alacsony szintje, aminek fontos szerepe van abban, hogy mindhárom nagy nemzetközi hitelminősítőnél (épphogy) a befektetésre ajánlott kategóriában van. (Forrás: Portfolio)
Vatican
12 February 2019 Eighty per cent of Vatican priests are gay according to explosive new book. It's due to be released in eight languages across 20 countries next week, on the day that Pope Francis' holds a summit at the Vatican on sexual abuse attended by bishops from all over the world. Martel, a former adviser to the French government who is openly gay, claims he spoke with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, 45 papal ambassadors or diplomatic officials, 11 Swiss guards and more than 200 priests and seminarians as research for the book. The author spent around 200 weeks staying in residences inside the Vatican in Rome. (Source: DailyMail)
European Commission
20 February 2019 Representatives of European Union governments endorsed a deal reached with the EU Parliament on the overhaul of the bloc's copyright rules. Under the reform agreed last week, Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc will be forced to share revenue with the creative industries and remove copyright-protected content on YouTube or Instagram. (Source: Reuters)
February 13, 2019 Already the most unpopular legislative effort in European history. Plenty of parties will be able to drum up support to throw out the parties that defied the will of voters and risked the destruction of the Internet as we know it to pour a few million Euros into the coffers of media companies and newspaper proprietors - after those companies told them not to. Under the final text, any online community, platform or service that has existed for three or more years, or is making €10,000,001/year or more, is responsible for ensuring that no user ever posts anything that infringes copyright, even momentarily. This is impossible, and the closest any service can come to it is spending hundreds of millions of euros to develop automated copyright filters. Those filters will subject all communications of every European to interception and arbitrary censorship if a black-box algorithm decides their text, pictures, sounds or videos are a match for a known copyrighted work. They are a gift to fraudsters and criminals, to say nothing of censors, both government and private. These filters are unaffordable by all but the largest tech companies, all based in the USA, and the only way Europe's homegrown tech sector can avoid the obligation to deploy them is to stay under ten million euros per year in revenue, and also shut down after three years. America's Big Tech companies would certainly prefer not to have to install these filters, but the possibility of being able to grow unchecked, without having to contend with European competitors, is a pretty good second prize (which is why some of the biggest US tech companies have secretly lobbied for filters). Every online community, service or platform is required to make "best efforts" to license anything their users might conceivably upload, meaning that they have to buy virtually anything any copyright holder offers to sell them, at any price, on pain of being liable for infringement if a user later uploads that work. Any link that contains more than "single words or very short extracts" from a news story must be licensed, with no exceptions for noncommercial users, nonprofit projects, or even personal websites with ads or other income sources, no matter how small. The Directive will head to the European Parliament for a vote for the whole body, either during the March 25-28 session or the April 15-18 session - with elections scheduled in May. Over four million Internet users have signed the petition against the Directive. (Source: ElectoricFrontierFoundation)
China
February 17, 2019 Fully open and anyone without authentication had full administrative rights to an online database tracking the movements of more than 2.5 million people in the far-western Xinjiang region, containing names, ID card numbers, birth dates and location data was left unprotected for months by Shenzhen-based facial-recognition technology firm SenseNets Technology. Exposed data also showed about 6.7 million location data points linked to the people the mostly Muslim Uygur minority and other Muslim groups who call Xinjiang home which were gathered within 24 hours, tagged with descriptions such as “mosque”, “hotel”, “internet cafe” and other places where surveillance cameras were likely to be found. (Source: SouthChinaMorningPost)
Israel
February 13, 2019 Netanyahu: Meetings in Warsaw with Arab leaders are in pursuit of ‘War With Iran’. "Here I am going to a meeting with 60 foreign ministers and envoys of countries from around the world against Iran," Netanyahu said. "What is important about this meeting - and this meeting is not in secret, because there are many of those - is that this is an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran." "What we are doing is pushing and driving Iran from Syria," Netanyahu added. (Source: TheWashingtonFreeBeacon)
Syria
February 14, 2019 isis’ loss of land is a great accomplishment but one that will transition the terror proto-state into an insurgency movement. The islamic state’s physical territory has dwindled to a ramshackle camp only a few square kilometers wide in eastern Syria’s Deir Ez Zor province. But as the so-called caliphate’s end nears, questions remain about what will become of the roughly 1,000 isis fighters who have been detained by U.S. troops and local allies. While some of the isis detainees are front-lines troops and untrained cannon fodder, a significant cohort of them are also more capable militants trained as external operation planners and master bomb makers who pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies. Most of these detainees are foreign fighters from roughly a dozen different countries. The U.S. State Department has been calling on the origin nations of foreign isis militants to repatriate and prosecute the detainees. How a residual presence will look may largely depend on President Trump, who has been eager to end American involvement in Syria. He has said, however, that he is interested in keeping a U.S. presence in Iraq in order to keep an eye on Iranian activity in the region. (Source: MilitaryTimes)
United States
February 20, 2019 Cherry picking record high temperatures in isolated locations tells absolutely nothing about the Earth’s climate. Climate change alarmists always find somewhere on Earth where temperatures are higher than ever. The focus is always on isolated temperatures that have reached all-time highs while the same reports ignore all-time record lows. These zealots would like you to believe that due to fossil fuel emissions, summers are now longer and hotter while winters are shorter and milder. The highest temperature ever reported was 136 degrees Fahrenheit in Libya in 1922. The record high temperature for the United States was 134 degrees Fahrenheit in Death Valley, California, in 1913. Fossil fuel emissions in 1913 and 1922 were negligible compared to today. The coldest temperature ever reported was 129 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Vostok, Antarctica, in 1983, when Carbon dioxide emissions were five times higher than in 1913. The coldest temperature in the lower 48 states of minus 64 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in 1996 in Embarass, Minnesota. Did the media and climate scientists warn that this low temperature indicated that we are headed for another Ice Age? The strongest heat wave ever recorded occurred in July 1936, generating high temperatures in half of America’s states. In 1935, fossil fuel emissions were 96 percent lower than today. America’s coldest year occurred in 1899, when temperatures dropped below 0 F in all 48 states. The most severe historic cold wave during the past century took place in 1936, which was the same year when the strongest heat wave took place. In terms of general behavior, the global warming alarmist prediction is that as time progresses and fossil fuel emissions increase, the number of record highs should increase and record lows should decrease. However, these trends do not exist and the data dispels, rather than supports, the global warming hypothesis. Since 1915 when temperatures exceeded 90F shows them decreasing with time rather than increasing. From 1970 until 1998 there was a warming period that raised temperatures by about 0.7 F that helped spawn the global warming alarmist movement. However, since 1998, little warming has occurred while carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase. This is totally consistent with variations in the amount of heat the Earth receives from the Sun. (Source: WesternJournal)
17th February 2019 A sinister development which will make everyone a suspect. President Trump has signed the Rapid DNA Act into law which means the police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime. We are looking at the erosion of the concept of innocent before proven guilty because it will allow police to go on fishing expeditions. Are we heading toward an Orwellian totalitarian state? (Source: DailyStar)
February 16, 2019 The next big thing for the church is the biggest untold secret. Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns. In her 2014 memoir, “Split: A Child, a Priest and the Catholic Church,” Dispenza details the sexual abuse she endured at the hands of a Catholic priest in the gritty East Los Angeles neighborhood where she grew up. Despite the childhood rapes by the priest - who was trusted by her family - Dispenza decided to become a nun, only to be faced with similar abuse from a superior sister while she was a novitiate. (Source: TheNewYorkPost)
February 15, 2019 President Trump capped months of political drama today, announcing he's signing a bill to fund the government, avoiding another government shutdown, while also taking the extraordinary action of declaring a national emergency to secure additional money for his proposed border wall that congressional Democrats refused to give him. "We're talking about an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs," he explained. Trump is seeking to a total of about $8 billion through a mix of spending from the congressional appropriations bill, executive action and the emergency declaration. $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon's military construction budget. (Source: ABCNews)
February 15, 2019 Our national expenditures on health care have popped from $27 billion in 1960 to over $3.3 trillion today. We’re now $22 trillion in debt, yet despite all that red ink, the Mexican cartels have control of our border and we’re not one bit closer to spending money on our own security. We’ve gone into deep debt for everything except the core function of the federal government. Now that Republicans are planning to cave on border funding, can they at least force a confrontation with Democrats over spending levels for functions of government that are nowhere near as important as border security? Thus, departments like HUD, which were able to completely shut down for a month with nobody noticing, will continue to enjoy record spending. We will continue to provide security for Kabul and Baghdad with the beefed-up military budget since last year’s budget deal, but no funding for our border or meaningful use of the military to protect our own sovereignty from the daily incursions by the most brutal cartels on Earth. Outlays on military spending are up 8.45 percent, but again, what is the purpose of the military if we use it everywhere else in the world except against those who most directly harm us at our own border? Health care is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Federal spending on health care (not including state expenditures) is projected to be $17 trillion over the next 10 years, dwarfing the cost of Social Security and the military. Health care in itself is the largest driver of the other great crisis, as noted: the mushrooming cost of the interest on the debt itself. Health care spending alone will be greater than all the revenue from payroll taxes and corporate income taxes combined and almost as large as individual income tax revenue. (Source: ConservativeReview)
Globalization
February 14, 2019 GPT-2 is a large transformer-based language model with 1.5 billion parameters, trained on a dataset. We created a new dataset which emphasizes diversity of content, by scraping content from the Internet. of 8 million web pages. GPT-2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text. For example: system prompt (human-written): "In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English." Model Completion (machine-written, 10 tries): 'The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science. Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved. Dr. Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La Paz, and several companions, were exploring the Andes Mountains when they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain, surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow.' (Source: OpenAI): https://tinyurl.com/y63bsvek
Earth
(February 15, 2019) Hundreds of miles under our feet, there is an underground mountain range with peaks that can compete with the Himalayas, says a new study on science. Scientists were able to glimpse the gigantic structures in the seismic wave data captured during the the second largest earthquake ever recorded – an 8.2 on the Richter scale in 1994 Bolivia earthquake. The terrestrial mantle is a thick band of silicatic rock that extends from the crust to the nucleus, representing 84% of the volume of our planet. At 410 miles from the surface, a boundary known as a 660-kilometer discontinuity divides the mantle into its upper and lower levels. (Source: RemoNews)
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