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Magyarország
2019. VII. 20. Az áttelepített kulturális intézmények nem tulajdonosok, hanem bérlők lesznek a Ligetben, minimális jogokkal, viszont lakbérfizetési kötelezettséggel. A tulajdonos az ugyancsak állami tulajdonú, kormányzati felügyeletű Városliget Zrt. lesz, ez a cég állapítja meg a bérleti díjat. A kormány egyáltalán nem szégyenlős, ha a kultúra templomainak bérbeadásáról van szó. A szisztéma egyébként hasonló ahhoz, ahogy az új futballstadionok működnek: főszabály szerint a labdarúgó klubok sem tulajdonosai az arénáknak, bérleti díjat fizetnek a használatért, csakhogy a kormány – a tao-támogatásokon keresztül, illetve az állami vagy a kormány által befolyásolt cégek szponzorációja révén – a valóságban a bérlet és az üzemeltetés költségeihez is nagyvonalúan hozzájárul. A kultúrától viszont épp a közelmúltban vették el a tao-t, a kulturális tárca pedig nincs abban a pénzügyi helyzetben, hogy a kiesett forrást teljeskörűen pótolja. A varosliget.info azt írja: „A Vároliget Zrt. nem kulturális intézmények, pl. múzeumok építésére kapott felhatalmazást a kormányzattól, hanem hasznosítható ingatlanok építésére. Ezek az ingatlanok sok különböző funkcióval bírnak majd, általában reprezentatív, különféle rendezvényekre jól értékesíthető termekkel, és bérbeadható vendéglátós, valamint kereskedelmi tevékenységre alkalmas helyiségekkel rendelkeznek. A múzeumok, mint intézmények ezekben az ingatlanokban helyiségeket bérelnek majd, tehát az épület nem az övék, és azzal nem rendelkeznek szabadon, hiszen azokat 99 évig a Városliget Zrt. kezeli, és természetesen hasznosítja majd, csakúgy mint a parkot. Mindannyian tévedünk tehát, amikor azt mondjuk, a Liget szélén épül az új Néprajzi Múzeum. A mondat helyesen úgy szól: a Liget szélén épülő multifunkcionális, bérbadás útján hasznosítandó épületben kerül elhelyezésre a Néprajzi Múzeum.” (Forrás: Népszava)
2019. VII. 12. Mindhiába. Elveszítettek egy 4 GB-os pendrive-ot, amin megtalálható volt a BRFK teljes nevesített személyzeti állománytáblája, születési név, születési idő, anyja neve, TAJ szám, beosztás, munkakör. A főkapitányság munkatársa még januárban vitte magával a pendrive-ot egy értekezletre. Az adathordozót a kulcskarikájára fűzte, a kulcsot pedig magával vitte a szállodai szobájába. Másnap kijelentkezett a szállodából, majd egy rövid gyorséttermi kitérő után visszatért a budapesti szolgálati helyére, ekkor vette észre: nincs meg a pendrive. Nem a szolgálati, hanem magáncélra használt adathordozóra másolta át az adatokat, és nem alkalmazott semmilyen biztonsági intézkedést a tárolt adatokkal kapcsolatban. A Nemzeti Adatvédelmi és Információszabadság Hatóság 5 millió forintra bírságolta a Budapesti Rendőr-főkapitányságot. (Forrás: Index)
2019. VII. 11. Molnár, DK-s európai parlamenti képviselő részére. Nem őriz a politikai emlékezet az elmúlt évtizedekből példát arra - sem a magyar, sem az európai parlament történetében -, hogy a megszerzett mandátumok arányában betölthető parlamenti tisztségek elosztásánál a képviselőcsoportok egymás ellen szavaztak volna. Nem a politikusok egymás iránti udvariassága miatt van ez így, hanem azért, mert a mandátumok és a hozzájuk kötődő parlamenti tisztségek aránya a választók döntésén nyugszik. Önök tehát semmi mást nem tettek, csak szembefordultak a választók akaratával, arcul csapták a magyarok demokratikus döntését, melyet az európai parlamenti választáson meghoztak. Ez elfogadhatatlan és vérlázító. Mindeközben a Demokratikus Koalíció veszélyes vizekre evezett, hiszen ha elfogadottá válik, hogy a politikai nézetkülönbségek miatt a frakciók nem támogatják egymás jelöltjeit a mandátumok arányában megszerzett tisztségekre, a magyar Országgyűlésben is döntési helyzetbe kerülhetünk. A Fidesz-frakció vezetőjeként ugyanis nehezen tudok majd azon képviselői javaslatokkal szemben érvelni, melyek szerint bevándorláspárti politikus ne tölthessen be parlamenti pozíciót. Ez esetben viszont Varju nem lenne a költségvetési bizottság elnöke, Vadai nem alelnökölhetné a honvédelmi és rendészeti bizottságot, Oláh pedig az európai ügyek bizottságában nem töltené be ezt a posztot. A Fidesz-KDNP európai képviselőcsoportja mindent meg fog tenni a bevándorlás megállításáért, a nemzetek Európájáért, a keresztény kultúra és a határok védelméért. Akkor is így lesz ez, ha Önök tovább folytatják áskálódó, Magyarország érdekeit sértő politikájukat. Üdvözlettel: Kocsis, frakcióvezető. (Forrás: Mandiner)
France
11 July 2019 The GAFA tax - an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Last month, top G20 finance chiefs meeting in Japan agreed there was an urgent need to find a global system to tax internet giants like Google and Facebook but clashed over how to do it. Google, Apple and Facebook have their European headquarters in Ireland, where they pay some of the EU's lowest corporate tax rates despite earning the bulk of their European revenues in Britain, France and Germany. Amazon's European base is Luxembourg, another low-tax jurisdiction. Ireland, Luxembourg and other small EU members have been active in thwarting efforts to impose an EU-wide digital tax, hastening go-it-alone efforts by France, Britain and others. France's parliament today passed a law making it the first major economy to impose a tax on digital giants. The law will levy a 3.0 percent tax on revenues generated from services to French consumers by the largest tech firms. The adoption of the law came as Britain unveiled draft legislation for a tax on digital giants, that would amount to 2.0 percent. (Source: Reuters)
Sweden
11 Jul 2019 Speaking to the daily Svenska Dagbladet, Volvo CEO Samuelsson lamented the fact that the auto manufacturer has been gradually losing its appeal to foreign tech experts and engineers, as well as top managers. The problem, according to him, partly lies in the fact that the specialists are reluctant to move to Sweden’s second largest city of Gothenburg, where Volvo’s headquarters are located, because of the arguably high crime rate. Among the other issues he mentioned were the lack of affordable housing and schools. The Volvo CEO even mentioned that the company might potentially consider moving its headquarters somewhere else – probably even out of Sweden – if this situation does not change. (Source: RT)
China
2019/07/15 Ambassadors representing 37 countries praised China for its "remarkable achievements in the field of human rights," just a day after a group of 22 other countries formally condemned Beijing for the mass detention of ethnic and religious minorities in the country's Xinjiang region. The countries backing China included several accused of human rights violations. Among those listed are Russia, accused of cracking down on individual freedoms and killing critics of President Putin; Myanmar, accused of carrying out crimes against humanity targeting the minority Rohingya community inside the country; and North Korea, which is accused of detaining more than 100,000 political prisoners in a gulag-like facilities. The 37 countries who signed the letter backing China included several Muslim majority nations, too, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Pakistan. (Source: CNN)
Israel
July 12, 2019 The Epstein scandal has found its way into Israel's elections. The Jewish-American multi-millionaire, who was charged in New York with sex trafficking of minors, is now the focus of a war of words between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rival Barak. Three alleged victims are mentioned in the indictment against Epstein. There are dozens more. With approximately two months to go until Israel goes back to the ballot box at the September 17 election, following Netanyahu's failure to form a government in May, Netanyahu's Likud party is polling far ahead of Barak's newly formed Israel Democratic Party. Netanyahu attacked the man who once served as his Defense Minister for his connections to Epstein. Epstein was the head of the Wexner Foundation that gave Barak 2.3 million dollars for a research program. The Wexner Foundation, which is headquartered in Ohio, works to develop Jewish professional and volunteer leaders across North America and public leaders in Israel. The research grant for Barak dates from 2004, when he was not a serving politician. In a Twitter attack, Barak questioned Netanyahu's connection to Mimran, a French multi-millionaire who is serving an eight-year prison term in a massive fraud case. Netanyahu has acknowledged receiving $40,000 from Mimran when he was a private citizen in 2001, but insists it was fully legal. Israel's Attorney General opens a criminal investigation into the ties between Barak and "the convicted pedophile Epstein". (Source: CNN)
Strait of Hormuz
July 19, 2019 The U.S. brought down an Iranian drone near the USS Boxer, an American warship in the Strait of Hormuz by using new technology that had just been added to naval defenses. MADIS sits atop a Marine vehicle, allowing it to be transported onto a ship or to front lines where Marines could face a drone threat, like Syria. It consists of radars and jammers that identify if a drone is a threat, and, if so, can jam the drone’s communications to the ground. (Source: TheWallStreetJournal)
July 16, 2019 Ship Riah, a Panamanian-flagged, 58-meter oil tanker based in the United Arab Emirates sailing through Strait of Hormuz, stopped transmitting its location over two days ago, after 11 p.m. on Saturday. The ship’s registered owner, Dubai-based Prime Tankers LLC, told it had sold the ship to another company called Mouj Al-Bahar. A man who answered a telephone number registered to the firm told the AP it didn’t own any ships. (Source: TimesofIsrael)
United States
July 20, 2019 Researchers at Northwestern University develop ‘Trojan Horse’ drug that tricks, then kills cancer cells. Researchers engineered a long-chain fatty acid capable of binding itself to drugs at both ends. The fatty acid, with drugs in tow, is then hidden inside a protein found in human blood that carries fat molecules throughout the body. Essentially, tumors are “tricked” into inviting the chemotherapeutics inside, allowing the drug to destroy them from the inside out. After making it inside the tumor, the hidden drug activates and kills cancer cells. This innovative delivery method is also lower in toxicity, thus causing less harmful side effects than most other chemotherapy treatments available today. Researchers used the new delivery method to carry an FDA-approved chemotherapy drug called paclitaxel into tumors in a small animal model. The drugs entered and completely eliminated tumors carrying bone, pancreatic, and colon cancer. (Source: StudyFinds)
07 17 19 Trump claims he never liked Epstein. The 1992 video shows a wild-haired Trump with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago, apparently pointing at and discussing young women who are dancing close to them. Federal prosecutors indicted Epstein this month, charging him with sex trafficking and accusing him of using his fortune to “create a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit. /video/ (Source: TheDailyBeast): https://tinyurl.com/y2kru7w3
July 15, 2019 Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military. He is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley. His speech was focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google: "Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI? "Number two, does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence? "Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military... because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn't go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?" He also added that those questions need to be asked by the FBI, by the CIA. (Source: Axios)
July 13, 2019 The Federal Trade Commission voted this week to approve a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook that could end an investigation into its privacy practices. The FTC opened its investigation into Facebook in March 2018, responding to reports that the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed personal data of 87 million Facebook users, which critics charged had violated an agreement Facebook brokered with the FTC in 2011 to protect users’ privacy. Cambridge Analytica developed a quiz app that harnessed information on those who installed it as well as their friends, a form of data collection that Facebook had allowed under an earlier version of its privacy policy. Such information may have helped Cambridge Analytica create profiles of users so that clients could better target people with political messages. But the FTC’s probe quickly expanded beyond the Cambridge Analytica incident to cover a torrent of other privacy and security abuses at Facebook, including the revelation that it had provided popular websites and the makers of some smartphones and other devices with access to users’ social data without adequately notifying them. (Source: msn)
July 13, 2019 By yesterday evening, more than 540,000 people from around the world had signed up to attend the joke Facebook event: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," - and just as many had indicated they were "interested." Planned for Sept. 20 in Amargosa Valley, an hour's drive away from Las Vegas, the event page is currently filled with thousands of posts theorizing the best way to break into the top-secret facility. (Source: ndtv)
July 12, 2019 The Pentagon is rapidly assessing the United States’ rare earths capability in a race to secure stable supply of the specialized material amid the country’s trade conflict with China, which controls the rare earths industry. The push comes weeks after China threatened to curb exports to the United States of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used to build fighter jets, tanks and a range of consumer electronics. Although China contains only a third of the world’s rare earth reserves, it accounts for 80% of U.S. imports of minerals because it controls nearly all of the facilities to process the material. The Pentagon has also held talks with rare earths suppliers in Malawi and Burundi. (Source: Reuters)
12 July 2019 Respiratory outbreak being investigated at Greenspring Retirement Community in Springfield after 54 residents fall ill. Two have died and 18 were hospitalized in Virginia. In a letter Wednesday to residents Greenspring described symptoms as "fever, cough, body aches, wheezing, hoarseness and general weakness." The outbreak had been reported in the assisted-living and skilled-nursing sections in Greenspring, home to 263 residents, Schwartz, a health department director told on Thursday. He said the outbreak began with the first case on June 30. The two patients who died in the outbreak had been hospitalized with pneumonia but were "older individuals with complex medical problems," he said. When you have a lot of people in close proximity, who have underlying medical conditions, there is an increased risk for outbreaks, he said. "Seeing a respiratory outbreak in a long-term care facility is not odd. ... One thing that's different about this outbreak is just that it's occurring in the summer when, usually, we don't have a lot of respiratory disease." The specific cause of the outbreak had not yet been identified but additional tests of samples were being done, according to Schwartz. 54 individuals had become ill with "respiratory symptoms ranging from upper respiratory symptoms (cough) to pneumonia" in the last 11 days. Of those initially hospitalized, seven have returned to the retirement home, said Benoff, regional communications manager for Erikson Living, which owns the retirement home. Although there had been no new hospitalizations in the "past couple of days," residents were still getting sick in the outbreak, the Fairfax County Department of Health said. "We remain vigilant in our response and will continue to provide frequent and transparent updates to residents, staff and family members," the retirement home said in a statement. The Fairfax County Health Department said it is investigating the incident. The department said that appropriate measures had been taken to reduce the risk of infection and keep residents safe, including closing the facility to new admissions, cancelling group activities, keeping ill residents in their rooms and increasing cleaning. (Source: ABCnews)
11 July 2019 Two intruders jumped a security perimeter fence at the Vallecitos GE Hitachi research rreactor in Alameda County today afternoon, about 64 km east of San Francisco. The plant is one of the few in the country that uses highly enriched uranium, a material that could be used to make an atomic bomb. Such plants have been under pressure from nonproliferation interests to convert to low-enriched uranium. (Source: Reuters)
NATO
17 Jul. 2019 NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has decided to appoint Geoana from Romania as the next Deputy Secretary General. He will replace Gottemoeller from the United States. (Source: NATO)
Globalization
17 July 2019 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The continued seeding of virus into new areas represents a constant risk of further amplification. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo are increased numbers of cases in Butembo and Mabalako; the epicentre has moved from Mabalako to Beni; and there is one imported case in Goma. Factors affecting the outbreak include population movement in highly densely populated areas; weak infection and prevention control practices in many health facilities; complex political environment; continued reluctance in the community; and the ongoing unstable security situation, which led to the recent murders of two community health workers. More than 70 entry points are being monitored and 75 million screenings have been conducted, with 22 cases detected in this manner. Beni is the main hotspot; cases in other areas are decreasing. There are 2512 confirmed or probable cases, including 136 health workers affected, with 40 deaths among them. Beni remains the epicentre of the outbreak, with 46% of the cases over the last 3 weeks. 15,000 people cross the border from Goma to Rwanda every day, as Goma is an important centre of economic activities with Rwanda. The recent travel to and from Uganda of a local trader who later died of Ebola demonstrates that the risk remains high for bordering countries. The Committee recognizes the shortage of supply of rVSV ZEBOV GPvaccine, despite the commendable efforts of the manufacturer of doubling the supply by 2020. (Source: WHO)
Space
07.15.19 Europe’s GPS sat-nav alternative Galileo goes down. The site InsideGNSS says the issue at hand has to do with Galileo’s Precise Timing Facility (PTF) in Italy, where all the constellation’s system clocks are calibrated for accurate time measurement. (Source: FastCompany)
July 14, 2019 Galileo, the EU's global navigation satellite system, has been down for four days, since July 11. 24 of the 26 Galileo satellites are listed as "not usable," while the other two are listing a status of "testing," which also means they're not ready for real-world usage. The Galileo satellite system was launched in 2016 and was funded by the EU as an alternative to the US Air Force's Global Position System (GPS) and the Russian government's GLONASS. It is provided under both free and commercial offerings and is widely used by governments agencies and private companies for navigation and search and rescue operations. Because it's provided for free, it is also widely used by the private tech sector and by most of the world's academia. The downtime also comes after widespread GPS outages were reported across Israel, Iran, Iraq, and Syria at the end of June. Israeli media blamed the downtime on Russian interference, rather than a technical problem. The GSA blamed the Galileo outage on "a technical incident related to its ground infrastructure. The search and rescue (SAR) feature - used for locating and helping people in distress situations for example at sea or mountains - remained operational during the outage, which impacted only navigational and satellite-based timing services. (Source: zdnet)
July 13, 2019 A Russian Proton-M rocket successfully delivered a cutting-edge space telescope into orbit. Its final destination is the L2 Lagrange point. Lagrange points are unique positions in the solar system where objects can maintain their position relative to the Sun and the planets that orbit it. Located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, the telescope aims to conduct a complete x-ray survey of the sky by 2025, the first space telescope to do so. (Source: AP)
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