Yearly Archives: 2017

FAA begins granting drone overflight waivers to large corporations

"CNN has won an interesting waiver regarding its commercial drone operating license with the FAA – an exemption that allows it to fly its Vantage Robotics Snap drone over open-air crowds of people at altitudes of up to 150 feet. This is a new precedent in this kind of waiver: Previous exemptions allowed flight of drones over people in closed set operations (like for filmmaking purposes) and only when tethered, with a max height of 21 feet. The new waiver granted to CNN, as secured through its legal counsel Hogan Lovells, allows for flight of the Vantage UAV (which is quite small and light) above crowds regardless of population density."

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FAA Proposes Worldwide Laptop Ban For Checked Bags On Int’l Flights

"The proposal, which will no doubt upset some frequent travelers, will be considered by the United Nations in the coming weeks. The FAA is concerned about the lithium-ion batteries that are common in electronic devices like laptops. Tests conducted by the agency have concluded that when large electronics overheat in luggage they run the risk of combustion when packed with aerosol canisters like hairspray and dry shampoo."

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Some startups find the American dream in China

"Wang is part of a group of Chinese nationals known as haigui or sea turtles, who return to the country after gaining knowledge and skills abroad. Last year, 432,500 Chinese who studied abroad returned to China, an increase of 58 percent compared with 2012, according to the country’s Ministry of Education. The boomerang effect is aided by the strength of China’s economy and the promise of its homegrown tech industry, including social networking giant Tencent, e-commerce firm Alibaba and search engine Baidu. Local governments provide incentives to startups that open offices."

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Medical marijuana to start growing in South Texas

"Any day now, medical marijuana will legally start to grow in the state of Texas. It will be planted, grown and processed on a 10-acre parcel of land in Schulenburg, a small community east of San Antonio, now that the company that owns the property — Cansortium Texas — has received the state’s first license to do so. The low-level cannabidiol will be sold, under a 2015 law, to help Texans with intractable epilepsy if federally approved medication hasn’t helped."

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Dentists Find Tooth Root Pulp Can Become an Alternative Source of Stem Cells

"A team of dentists and scientists from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has found a rich new source of stem cells. Tooth root pulps, they discovered, were home to both pluripotent and multipotent cells. The team also developed a way to extract them without damaging the cells."

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The Deep State’s Bogus ‘Iranian Threat’

"It originated in the early 1990s when the neocons in the George HW Bush administration realized that with the Cold War's end, the Warfare State was in grave danger of massive demobilization like the US had done after every war until 1945. So among many other invented two-bit threats, the Iranian regime was demonized in order to keep the Imperial City in thrall to its purported national security threat and in support of the vast global armada of military forces, bases and occupations needed to contain it (including the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and US bases throughout the region)."

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Declassified files reveal US supported Indonesia’s fascist massacre

"Declassified files have revealed new details of U.S. government knowledge and support of an Indonesian army extermination campaign that killed several hundred thousand civilians during anti-communist hysteria in the mid-1960s. The thousands of files from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta covering 1963-66 were made public Tuesday after a declassification review that began under the Obama administration. The Associated Press reviewed key documents in the collection in advance of their release."

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Trump Has Killed More Civilians in 9 Months Than Obama Did in 8 Years

"President Trump has been in office for just 9 months, and he has already surpassed Obama’s murderous record with estimated numbers as high as 4,500 civilian deaths. Trump made headlines in December 2015, when he declared that if elected, he would not only kill members of ISIS—he would also 'take out their families.' He is following through on that promise, according to a report from Steven Feldstein, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State."

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