Indonesia angrily presented proof that the Australian navy paid smugglers to turn around, just after Abbott, the suppository of all dishonesty, said the media were fussing about a nonexistent dispute with Indonesia.

Abbott must be taking lessons from Dubya in disregarding the reality-based community.

Turkish editor Bulent Kenes was convicted of "insulting the president" . He suggested that the president's mother would be ashamed of his official actions if she were alive.

I know nothing about the political views she had, but I think every Turkish citizen ought to be ashamed of President Erdoğan for prosecuting editors for expressing their opinions. The people of Turkey deserve human rights.

US stores demand the right to do face recognition without asking permission , because they want to look for known (or alleged?) shoplifters.

That is a legitimate goal, so here is a way to provide for it while preserving our privacy.

The state can provide a list of photos of convicted shoplifters, and legally authorize taking photos and comparing them with this list only, and the store must delete them immediately if they don't match. Furthermore, the cameras and computers that do this must have no connection to any network (because otherwise the US, China, Russia and 50 other governments will crack in and collect them all), only an I/O device to signal "alarm" with a communication bit rate of 1 bit per second.

The idea seems pretty obvious to me. I can't be the first to think of it. I wonder, was it proposed in these meetings?

I get the impression that the store companies really want more than to recognize shoplifters, and they are using that as an excuse to get more.

Wild bees contribute billions of dollars a year to human agriculture.

Assignment of monetary value to natural ecosystems and their effects is misleading because it imposes an assumed linearity of value: the false 10% of the wild bees are worth 10% of the value of all of them.

We could cope with loss of 10% of the world's total wild bee population, but loss of 100% of it would be a permanent catastrophe, far more than 10 times as bad.

Delay Could Sink Fast Track, But Corporate 'Arm-Twisting' Not Over Yet.