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PETALING JAYA: The United States will charge a Malaysian man, with a “Datuk Seri” title, with conspiracy to engage in wildlife trafficking and money laundering. In a statement, the US Attorney for the southern district of New York said Teo Boon Ching, 57, was extradited from Thailand yesterday after he was arrested in June for his second wildlife trafficking offence.US attorney Damian William said Teo was a leader of a transnational criminal enterprise which trafficked rhinoceros horns and enriched poachers who killed endangered animals.Teo, who is said to have businesses in Malaysia and Thailand, had allegedly trafficked and smuggled rhinoceros...

I have been attempting for several days to collect my thoughts on the Russo-Ukrainian War and condense them into another analysis piece, but my efforts were consistently frustrated by the war’s stubborn refusal to sit still. After a slow, attritional grind for much of the summer, events have begun to accelerate, calling to mind a famous quip from Vladimir Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”This has been one of those weeks. It began with the commencement of referenda in four former Ukrainian oblasts to determine whether or not to join the Russian...

A Freeper sentiment in musical form.

It’s easy to be disgusted... especially if you consume corporate media. And unfortunately that includes the corporate conservative media, who would rather allow the DC Media, aka the New York Times and the Washington Post, lead them around by the nose— than even attempt to create and maintain an #AmericaFirst narrative.Recently the corporate conservative media showered FREE publicity on Republican CA Gubernatorial Candidate Bruce ‘the mental patient’ Jenner, AKA a man that wears women’s clothes… yet despite the mountains of free publicity, the Tranny pulled only 6% support in a recent poll of California voters.Jenner had the lowest support among...

Tom Douglas still marvels at how quickly everything went south. “We were having a really good start of February,” said the veteran Seattle chef and restaurateur. He was set to sign a lease on a new space late in the month, which would have been his 14th restaurant overall. Mr. Douglas and his partners also own concession and catering businesses, a line of spices and sauces, and a cooking school. ... The coronavirus outbreak was preceded by trouble at Boeing, Washington’s largest private employer, and followed by protests for racial justice and police reform that culminated with the “Capitol Hill...

Beijing: While the coronavirus epidemic has caused panic all over the world, China is not deterring its poor acts. China once again demonstrated its strength in front of the entire world on 11 April, in which the Chinese Navy took part in realistic maritime operations. After this action of China, the whole world is in panic. About 10 days before this, China had also conducted military maneuvers at an undisclosed location. Due to which the neighboring countries were in panic. Japan and Taiwan are the most troubled by China's military drills. This time, China has launched missiles equipped with guided...

More than half of the world’s population—4.2 billion people—live in cities. This number is expected to rise, with 68 percent of the global population estimated to live in urban areas by 2050. Among the world’s megacities—defined as urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants—Tokyo, Japan, is the largest, with 37 million citizens. It is followed by Delhi, India (29 million), and Shanghai, China (26 million). In the UK, after several decades of rural-to-urban migration, 83 percent of people live in urban environments—and London has become the first European megacity. The detrimental effects of urban living on physical health have...

The UK government is launching an inquiry into whether algorithms used in areas such as criminal justice, recruitment, and finance are biased against people based on gender or race. The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) announced the new inquiry on Wednesday. It will be led by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, an independent watchdog set up by the department in 2018 to come up with best practice policy on how to police artificial intelligence. The Cabinet Office’s Race Disparity Unit, which highlights discrimination in public services, will also work on the new review. The inquiry comes...

Newly revealed government statistics show that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, on a case-by case-basis, is nibbling away at the H-1B program while not making any obvious major policy changes. There are something approaching 750,000 H-1B workers in the United States, all here on a temporary, legal basis, most of them college grads (along with a few models), with most working in high-tech fields. Congress has set annual ceilings for new H-1Bs at 65,000 for alien college grads generally, and 20,000 for aliens with U.S. advanced degrees, mostly a master's. There are, routinely, more H-1B workers on extended visas than...

... The event I refer to is the drilling of the first well which would use hydraulic fracturing to crack shale rock, thereby releasing the gas beneath the rock. Put differently, it was 20 years ago that “fracking” was born. ... The volumes of natural gas, natural gas liquids, and crude oil that this technique has uncovered all over the country have been unfathomable, and over the last decade alone has caused the United States to more than double their crude oil production on an absolute basis, and to surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia in production on a relative basis....

A young boy from Chongqing in south-west China became a victim of his own prank after he urinated on a set of lift buttons and became trapped. Closed-circuit television footage shared on Chinese social media platforms shows the boy entering the lift alone last Friday (Feb 23). He lets out a stream of urine at the lift buttons, zips up his pants and prepares to exit the lift. But when the lift reaches his floor, the doors open slightly, before shutting immediately. In a panic, he jumps in the lift and starts pressing multiple buttons, which began flickering, before the...

VietJetAir surprised passengers on their first Bangkok to Dalat, Vietnam, flight on Monday with a complimentary in-flight bikini fashion show. Did that make cramming in economy seats a little bit more comfortable? The parade of model in floral bikinis was meant to promote the city of Dalat, which is known for its beautiful flower gardens. So upon launching the new route, it makes sense that VietJet Air, a company known for putting scantily-clad women on their planes, would put bikini-clad women — this time with decorative flowers — on the first plane from Bangkok to Dalat. Judging from the reaction...

Protecting American jobs was a signature theme of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign. A frequent target of candidate Trump was the H-1B visa program. The program, created more than 25 years ago, allows American companies to fill gaps in the workforce from overseas with highly skilled employees, who can’t be found in the U.S. Many businesses use the program as intended, but we discovered more and more are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to fire American workers and replace them with younger, cheaper, temporary foreign workers with H-1B visas. But before the American workers walk...

There’s one interpretation of the meaning of quantum mechanics that manages to skip a lot of the unphysical weirdness of the mainstream interpretations: it's de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave theory. There are some pretty out-there explanations for the processes at work behind the incredibly successful mathematics of quantum mechanics - things are both waves and particles at the same time, the act of observation defines reality, cats are alive and dead, or even: the universe is constantly splitting into infinite alternate realities. The weird results of quantum experiments seem to demand weird explanations of the nature of reality. In this episode,...

The Obama administration's "18F" program to create its own version of a high-tech startup for government digital projects has foundered since its launch in 2014, losing nearly $32 million as its staff spent most of its time on unbillable work, according to a new inspector general report. ... The 10-month investigation by the GSA's inspector general found that 52 percent of 18F's work was unbillable and included an internal project to change its logo by altering its font, alignment and background color. In all, 727 staff hours, or $140,104, were spent on developing the brand, including that logo change. Staff...

Thanks to timely assists from Wikileaks, Trump has successfully framed Hillary Clinton as a crooked politician. Meanwhile, Clinton has successfully framed Trump as a dangerous monster. If the mainstream polls are accurate, voters prefer the crook to the monster. That makes sense because a crook might steal your wallet but the monster could kill you. As of today, Clinton has the superior persuasion strategy. Crook beats monster. Reality isn’t a factor in this election, as per usual. If the truth mattered, voters might care that the Democratic primaries were rigged against Sanders. They might care that the Clinton Foundation looks...

QUITO, Ecuador (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than 60 mayors from around the world have joined forces to create an alliance dubbed a 'global parliament' to demand a more powerful role in the management of city growth and urbanisation. Speaking on the eve of the United Nations Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador, on Sunday, the mayors outlined a united vision in which local government would lead the global response to rising urbanisation. ... She said the feminisation of politics at local government level had already achieved more livable cities and that the group had to work for more women...

Unless something dramatic happens (certainly possible in this election), I believe Donald Trump will win the 2016 election quite easily, and I believe this victory will be driven by the resentment vote. Forget card-carrying Democrats and Republicans, they will vote along party lines. The key to this election is, and always has been, independent voters. I believe the following chart from Gallup tells you all you need to know about who will decide this thing. ... Taking a step back, it’s become clear to me that many members from the corrupt status quo of both useless political parties are making...

In the future, robots will increasingly replace farm workers, using artificial intelligence to plant, grow and harvest our food. In fact, many farms are already using fleets of robots, which can tend to fruits and veggies more efficiently than a human can. Here's a look at seven machines that are currently aiding farmers around the world. 1) The Wall-Ye prunes vineyards 2) The BoniRob destroys 120 weeds per minute 3) Abundant Robotics' bot picks one ripe apple per second 4) The Blue River Lettuce Bot thins out lettuce fields 5) The Prospera bot 'sees' dying plants before farmers can 6)...

"Lizard-brain narcissism." "Disgusts a significant number of people in his own party." Says things "one might expect from a patient in a mental institution." The subject is Donald J. Trump, and the speakers are all prominent conservative writers. (Jonah Goldberg, Jennifer Rubin, Stephen F. Hayes.) Trump appalls them. They fear his election would both endanger the country and destroy the Republican Party as a home for principled conservatism. They desperately want Trump to lose, and the harder he falls the better their chances of restoring coherence to their party. But for Trump to lose, Hillary Clinton must win. Disaffected conservatives...