position:official

  • Fast AI Machine Learning Lecture 1 Notes
    https://hackernoon.com/fast-ai-machine-learning-lecture-1-notes-3ca45cec4235?source=rss----3a81

    These are the (Unofficial) Lecture Notes of the Fast.ai Machine Learning for Coders MOOC.You can find the Official Thread hereThis is Part 1/12 Lecture Notes.IntroductionCourse taught at USF, available as MOOC.Tip: The right place to watch the Lectures is at courses.fast.aiTip: Check for “Cards” on the Video.Alternatives to Local Setup: (With Fast AI Support)CrestlePricing: 3 Cents an hour (Approx)Jupyter Nb opens in browserPaperspaceLocal Setup instructions:Assuming you have your GPU and Anaconda Setup (Preferably CUDA ≥9):$ git clone https://github.com/fastai/fastai$ cd #fastai$ conda env updateUse the Setup Script provided Here$ bash | wget files.fast.ai/setup/paperspaceApproach to LearningFollow Along.Watch First and Follow Later (Lose Recommendation).You might miss some important information (...)

    #blue-book-for-bulldozers #data-science #random-forest #machine-learning

  • Tear-gas canister puts Gazan on life support
    https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/tear-gas-canister-puts-gazan-on-life-support

    A Palestinian was on life support in a Gaza hospital on Friday after being struck in the face by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier.

    Israel says it uses tear gas as a non-lethal measure against Gaza border protests.

    But the projectile, launched by a soldier on the Israeli side of the frontier, hit Haitham Abu Sabla in the face as he watched Palestinian stone-throwers taking part in demonstrations east of Khan Younis town, witnesses said.

    As seen in these pictures by Reuters photographer Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, the 23-year-old staggered back with the gas-spewing canister embedded in his cheek, his shirt bloodied, before collapsing.

    A Gaza hospital official said Abu Sabla was placed on life support after the canister was surgically removed

    Le faits sont terribles... Les photos sont insupportables...

    Dans le même temps, ces images démontrent aussi tristement la valeur de témoignage du travail des photo-reporters face aux exactions de la répression militaire et/ou policière.

    #Palestine #Israël #Gaza #répression #guerre #guerre-coloniale #photo-journalisme

  • #Seymour_Hersh on spies, state secrets, and the stories he doesn’t tell - Columbia Journalism Review
    https://www.cjr.org/special_report/seymour-hersh-monday-interview.php

    Bob Woodward once said his worst source was Kissinger because he never told the truth. Who was your worst source?

    Oh, I wouldn’t tell you.

  • Why hysteria about Islam is clouding France’s fight against radicalization | Karina Piser
    https://www.icwa.org/why-hysteria-about-islam-is-clouding-frances-fight-against-radicalization

    But even as scholars and practitioners have insisted on the social or personal drivers of radicalization that often have little to do with religiosity, the government seems fixated on Islam itself. The Interior Ministry official I spoke to complained about that apparent misreading: “I’m sorry, but sometimes when I hear Collomb talk, he says things that seem to undo all of the work we’ve been doing on the ground for years, that we do on a daily basis.” That, the official told me, is likely a function of “political choices of the moment that are made under pressure from public opinion,” at the expense of expertise—or that are often influenced by “mediatized experts who lack necessary knowledge of the field.” Source: (...)

  • ‘Barbaric’: America’s cruel history of separating children from their parents
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/31/barbaric-americas-cruel-history-of-separating-children-from-their-pa

    The policy has generated outrage among Democrats and immigration advocates. And it has conjured memories of some of the ugliest chapters in American history.

    “Official US policy,” tweeted the African American Research Collaborative over the weekend. “Until 1865, rip African American children from their parents. From 1870s to 1970s, rip Native American children from their parents. Now, rip children of immigrants and refugees from their parents.”

    #separation #enfants #parents #politique #états-unis

  • Tesla that crashed into police car was in ’autopilot’ mode, California official says
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/29/tesla-crash-autopilot-california-police-car

    If confirmed, it would be the third time a Tesla in autopilot has crashed into a stationary emergency vehicle this year A Tesla car operating in “autopilot” mode crashed into a stationary police car in Laguna Beach, California, leaving the driver injured and the patrol vehicle “totalled”, according to an official. Sgt Jim Cota, the public information officer for the Laguna Beach police department, tweeted photos of the accident, which was reported at 11.07am on Tuesday. The driver of the (...)

    #Tesla #voiture #algorithme

  • Rudy Giuliani won deal for OxyContin maker to continue sales of drug behind opioid deaths | US news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/22/rudy-giuliani-opioid-epidemic-oxycontin-purdue-pharma?CMP=Share_Android

    The US government missed the opportunity to curb sales of the drug that kickstarted the opioid epidemic when it secured the only criminal conviction against the maker of OxyContin a decade ago.

    Purdue Pharma hired Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now Donald Trump’s lawyer, to head off a federal investigation in the mid-2000s into the company’s marketing of the powerful prescription painkiller at the centre of an epidemic estimated to have claimed at least 300,000 lives.
    The Sackler family made billions from OxyContin. Why do top US colleges take money tainted by the opioid crisis?
    Read more

    While Giuliani was not able to prevent the criminal conviction over Purdue’s fraudulent claims for OxyContin’s safety and effectiveness, he was able to reach a deal to avoid a bar on Purdue doing business with the federal government which would have killed a large part of the multibillion-dollar market for the drug.

    The former New York mayor also secured an agreement that greatly restricted further prosecution of the pharmaceutical company and kept its senior executives out of prison.

    OxyContin became the go-to drug for people looking for an instant high by snorting or injecting.

    “This was the magic pill, right? This was a long-acting pill that the addicts wouldn’t like and you couldn’t get dependent on, and that is the magic bullet. The reality is it just wasn’t true,” said Brownlee. “It was highly deceptive and then they trained their sales force to go out and to push that deception on physicians.”

    Investigators waded through several million of Purdue’s internal memos, marketing documents and notes from sales representatives. Brownlee’s office discovered training videos in which reps acted out selling the drug using the false claims. “This was pushed by the company to be marketed in an illegal way, pushed from the highest levels of the company, that in my view made them a criminal enterprise that needed to be dealt with,” said Brownlee.

    The US attorney had six meetings with Giuliani. They moved from how to interpret the evidence and questions around discovery to negotiations over the final settlement.

    But Giuliani and his team seemed to be also working their Washington contacts. The Purdue lawyers complained to the office of the then deputy attorney general, James Comey, whose tenure as head of the FBI lay ahead of him, that Brownlee was exceeding his legal authority in pursuit of documents from the company.

    “The defence lawyers contacted Mr Comey unbeknownst to us and said those guys down there are crazy,” said Brownlee. The US attorney went to Washington to explain to Comey in person. Purdue was not instantly recognizable as a pharmaceutical company to most people in DC. The name was easily mistaken for Perdue Farms, a regional chicken producer well known for its television ads featuring the owner, Frank Perdue. “Mr Comey said, why are you prosecuting the chicken guy?” said Brownlee.

    Once that misunderstanding was cleared up, Comey signed off on Brownlee’s actions and Purdue was forced to hand over the documents. Brownlee set the drug maker a deadline in October 2006 to agree to the plea deal or face a trial. Hours before it expired, the federal prosecutor received a call at home from a senior justice department official, Michael Elston, chief of staff to the new deputy attorney general, Paul McNulty.

    Elston asked why the case was being pushed along so rapidly and pressed for a delay. The prosecutor again saw the influence of Purdue’s lawyers at work and cut the call short.

    Brownlee said he did not want to be responsible for taking OxyContin off the market and so agreed with Giuliani to target the prosecution at the parent company, Purdue Frederick. That left Purdue Pharma, cleaved out as a separate painkiller manufacturer in 1991, to continue selling the painkiller without restriction even though opioid deaths were escalating.

    “I didn’t feel as a lawyer I could be in a position to bar anyone from getting OxyContin. Faced with that decision, I was just simply not prepared to take it off the market. I didn’t feel like that was my role. My role was to address prior criminal conduct. Hold them accountable. Fine them. Make sure the public knew what they did. ” said Brownlee.

    Brownlee said he expected federal regulators, particularly the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies to use the criminal conviction to look more closely at Purdue and its drug. But there was no follow-up and OxyContin went on being widely prescribed .

    #Opioides #Purdue_Pharma

  • The Chinese Giant Salamander Is Facing Extinction - The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/how-a-pyramid-scheme-doomed-the-worlds-largest-amphibians/560786

    immigrants from the south, arriving in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, had no such compunctions. They harvested the salamander in huge numbers, often using toxic insecticides to immobilize the creature. And when natural populations plummeted, they started farming it, for use in soups, stews, and several other dishes. There’s even a salamander jelly.

    From 2004 onward, the number of farms grew rapidly. The government encouraged them as a way of boosting the fortunes of otherwise poor rural areas. Official licenses were issued, but many farms ran illicitly. By 2011, they held around 2.6 million salamanders between them. In some counties, salamander farming became the main industry.

    Bizarrely, only 3 percent of the animals raised by the farms are eventually sold to restaurants. The rest are sold to more start-up farms. This absurd amphibian Ponzi scheme so inflated the worth of the salamanders that a small, 2-kilogram individual could sell for around $1,500. As a result, people began supplementing the farmed stock by illegally collecting the animals from the wild.

  • ’We die anyway, so let it be in front of the cameras’: Conversations with Gazans - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    My friends in Gaza are outraged by Israel’s claim that Hamas rules everything. ’You people always looked down at us, so it’s hard for you to understand that no one demonstrates in anyone else’s name’

    Amira Hass May 20, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-we-die-anyway-so-let-it-be-in-front-of-the-camera-talking-to-gazan

    “Our ability, the Palestinians, to be killed is greater than your ability, the Israelis, to kill,” a resident of the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem told me at the beginning of the second intifada. Ever an optimist, he meant that because of this difference, in the end the two sides would reach a fair agreement.
    On Tuesday this week, alongside the border fence and across from Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip, his mistake once again became clear. There’s a limit to the Palestinians’ ability to be killed. In the morning after the Monday of bloodshed, the protesters took a break. Sixty fresh mourning tents and hundreds of newly wounded justified the lull they asked for. The next day, Nakba Day, which was supposed to be the peak, was actually the day they gave up on the symbolic mass March of Return to the border fence.
    >> Israel’s Gaza Killings: War Crimes or Self-defense? Experts Weigh In ■ The bloodstained first act of the Trump Intifada || Opinion ■ If you call the Gaza death toll ’disproportionate,’ how many Israelis have to die for the sake of symmetry? || Opinion

    Between the sunflower and potato fields of the kibbutzim, I was jealous of my colleagues who were forwarding the statements by the army and Israeli politicians with such great self-persuasion. According to Israeli spokespeople, both military and civilian, the respite along the border fence is unequivocal proof that Hamas’ leaders control everything, and everyone is under their authority; they’re the ones who sent the people to their deaths a day earlier, they’re the ones who prevented that scenario the next day. So simple.

    According to those reports, Egypt handed down instructions to stop the process – after receiving an Israeli request – and Hamas obeyed. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was humiliated, and it worked. All this is received in Israel as established facts, investigative journalism and another Israeli victory. There’s no need to be in Gaza to know, and it doesn’t matter that the army forbids Israeli journalists to enter the Strip.

    All our bionic powers do the work: balloons for taking photographs, drones, eavesdropping, collaborators, an off-the-record statement by a senior Fatah official in Ramallah. All this appears to provide what we interpret as the gospel truth. In comparison, an abundance of details, explanations, assumptions, denials, hesitations and contradictions that we receive from the Palestinian side are considered failed journalism that doesn’t provide a bottom line. 

    Near the sprinklers blithely spraying water in the Israeli fields, I wondered: If you knew that Hamas planned to cynically send people to their deaths so as to once again gain attention and portray Israel as evil, why do you do what they wanted? Why do you, who didn’t use nonlethal means, obey Hamas too? 

    There’s an interior fence, a security fence, and a berm that was built with earth removed from the digging of Israel’s new underground barrier. And there’s a security road and then another one. And then the fields. Around it all are lookout posts and above are surveillance balloons and drones. And all you could do was prove Israel’s ability to kill and maim?

  • ’We die anyway, so let it be in front of the cameras’: Conversations with Gazans
    Haaretz.com | Amira Hass May 19, 2018 11:45 AM
    My friends in Gaza are outraged by Israel’s claim that Hamas rules everything. ’You people always looked down at us, so it’s hard for you to understand that no one demonstrates in anyone else’s name’
    Amira Hass May 19, 2018 11:45 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/we-die-anyway-so-let-it-be-in-front-of-the-camera-talking-to-gazans-1.60980

    “Our ability, the Palestinians, to be killed is greater than your ability, the Israelis, to kill,” a resident of the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem told me at the beginning of the second intifada. Ever an optimist, he meant that because of this difference, in the end the two sides would reach a fair agreement.

    On Tuesday this week, alongside the border fence and across from Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip, his mistake once again became clear. There’s a limit to the Palestinians’ ability to be killed. In the morning after the Monday of bloodshed, the protesters took a break. Sixty fresh mourning tents and hundreds of newly wounded justified the lull they asked for. The next day, Nakba Day, which was supposed to be the peak, was actually the day they gave up on the symbolic mass March of Return to the border fence.

    Between the sunflower and potato fields of the kibbutzim, I was jealous of my colleagues who were forwarding the statements by the army and Israeli politicians with such great self-persuasion. According to Israeli spokespeople, both military and civilian, the respite along the border fence is unequivocal proof that Hamas’ leaders control everything, and everyone is under their authority; they’re the ones who sent the people to their deaths a day earlier, they’re the ones who prevented that scenario the next day. So simple.

    According to those reports, Egypt handed down instructions to stop the process – after receiving an Israeli request – and Hamas obeyed. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was humiliated, and it worked. All this is received in Israel as established facts, investigative journalism and another Israeli victory. There’s no need to be in Gaza to know, and it doesn’t matter that the army forbids Israeli journalists to enter the Strip.

    All our bionic powers do the work: balloons for taking photographs, drones, eavesdropping, collaborators, an off-the-record statement by a senior Fatah official in Ramallah. All this appears to provide what we interpret as the gospel truth. In comparison, an abundance of details, explanations, assumptions, denials, hesitations and contradictions that we receive from the Palestinian side are considered failed journalism that doesn’t provide a bottom line.

    Near the sprinklers blithely spraying water in the Israeli fields, I wondered: If you knew that Hamas planned to cynically send people to their deaths so as to once again gain attention and portray Israel as evil, why do you do what they wanted? Why do you, who didn’t use nonlethal means, obey Hamas too?

    There’s an interior fence, a security fence, and a berm that was built with earth removed from the digging of Israel’s new underground barrier. And there’s a security road and then another one. And then the fields. Around it all are lookout posts and above are surveillance balloons and drones. And all you could do was prove Israel’s ability to kill and maim?

    Silent proximity

    From a hill in the fields of Kibbutz Nir Am, you could clearly see Beit Hanun, Izbet Abed Rabo and the edges of Shujaiyeh in northern Gaza. The tall apartment blocks too, rising high. The continuous built-up area from Beit Lahia to the southern end of Gaza City seems very close. A single white pickup truck drove along the seam line between the farmed Palestinian fields and the wide strip of land where Israel forbids farming, and to the north a horse-drawn cart set off.

    This silent proximity, without any contact, demonstrated the state of imprisonment – from the opposite side. After all, I once lived there, I went to all those places that I now see through binoculars and remember the events I covered and the people I wrote about, between the wars, during the wars, during the uprisings and so-to-speak lulls.

    Now these places are a film, to see and not touch. A kilometer or two away are my friends, dear to me, and we’re not allowed to see each other anymore. One of them joked that he’d come to the March of Return camp and wave a large Palestinian flag to say hello to me. But WhatsApp is more convenient.

    On the phone my friends are outraged and everyone says it in their own way: To say Hamas controls all this is to take from every Palestinian in Gaza not only their right to freedom of movement and a respectable livelihood but also the right to deep frustration and despair – and their right to express it.

    “The Israelis look look down on us and have always looked down on us. In your eyes, a good Arab is a collaborator or dead,” one said. “Therefore it’s hard for you to understand that no one demonstrates in the name of someone else’s. Everyone goes there for themselves. We’re a people without resources and now without a vision and without a plan, and at the lowest point in terms of international support and internal organization. But we went out to demonstrate in order to disrupt something in the celebrations of the transfer of the embassy. Jerusalem is dear to us. We go so as not to die in silence. Because we’re sick and tired of dying quietly, in our homes,” he added.

    “If you die, be in front of the cameras. Loudly. I’m going to the mosque. There hasn’t been any order from above to go to the demonstration. I hear young people saying that tomorrow they’ll go die at the fence, like someone who’s talking about a picnic or candy. I went to the [March of] Return camp two or three times, and I didn’t like it. Too much confusion. If Hamas was controlling the entire event there wouldn’t be a mess there. After all, you know how Hamas events are always orderly, organized, disciplined.”

    True, there were Hamas security people in civilian clothes; they weren’t there as Hamas but as law and order for the acting government, as at every mass event – to prevent armed people from approaching the fence, provocations by collaborators, to intervene if there was a dispute or sexual harassment.

    Hamas has lost its popularity in Gaza because of the failures and disasters of the past 10 years, a friend promised me after he reminded me that he “doesn’t like them at all.” At the beginning, they weren’t enthused by the idea of the March of Return, after young activists brought the idea to all political factions’ leaders, he says.

    After that Hamas adopted the idea too. As an organization, Hamas is capable of offering what other groups can’t: rides to the March of Return camps, maybe a sandwich and a bottle of cola and tents. “But they can’t force us to come and endanger ourselves. After all, it’s dangerous to be even 300 or 400 meters away, because the soldiers shoot at us.”

    A foreigner in Gaza had the impression: “Hamas can’t order people to go to demonstrations and endanger their lives, but they can stop them from nearing the fence.” One of the ways is statements in the media.

    The many non-Hamas dead

    On Wednesday, a uniform report landed at a number of Israeli media outlets, that a Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardawil, “admitted in an interview with Palestinian television that 50 of the 60 killed in the past two days were Hamas members.” A great sigh of relief was heard in Israel. Hamas? In other words, terrorists by definition, in other words, you’re allowed to kill them. There’s even a commandment to do so.

    The source of the report was an Arabic-language tweet by Avichay Adraee of the IDF Spokesman’s Office. He attached to the tweet, a short fragment from the hour-long-plus interview with Bardawil on the Facebook-transmitted news channel Baladna.

    The interviewer, Ahmed Sa’id, asked difficult questions he was hearing on the street, mostly from Fatah supporters: What about the humiliation you suffered in Egypt, and why is Hamas sending people to the fence to die – and you are reaping the (political) fruit?

    Bardawil had to defend his organization and say this wasn’t true, there was no humiliation and Hamas members were demonstrating like anybody else, with everybody else.

    “Unfortunately, this is the organization today that nurtures the motivation and awareness among young people the most,” one of my friends explained to me earlier.

    Let’s return to Bardawil. So he said that 50 of the 60 killed were Hamas members. I checked and was told that the official figure Hamas has is that from the beginning of the March of Return on March 30, 42 people linked to Hamas were among the 120 people killed: members of the movement, well-known activists, members of Hamas families.

    It seems that about 20 members of Hamas’ military wing were killed, and they were killed not near the protests but under circumstances that still must be clarified. But the rest were unarmed rank-and-file protesters. And they demonstrated because they were Gazans. But once Bardawil said what he said it’s hard to deny his words in public. “This (figure of 50) is another typical exaggeration of ours,” said my friend who didn’t come to wave his flag to me to say hello.

    As for exaggerations, “the idea of the March of Return to break the standstill and stop Gaza’s slow descent – we all liked that, me too,” said someone else. “But the details I don’t like. What’s this foolishness of the March of Return and lifting the blockade?’ They haven’t even thought through the slogans properly. Because if the goal is to return to the villages, the blockade is an irrelevant issue.”

    Between the sunflowers and the few fires that broke out Tuesday, soldiers were at their posts on alert. They moved on the continuum between hyperactive self-importance and the idleness of a picnic. They were posted within the perimeters of the kibbutzim, a very short distance from the houses. The armored personnel carriers were also within the distance of a morning walk.

    This is what’s called a military presence in the heart of a civilian population. I remembered the reverse circumstance, of Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip, which served as justification for Israel to besmirch the group as hiding behind civilians, and for the IDF to bomb anyone near them.

  • Turkish court bans 9 books on terror charges

    A Turkish government has banned the sale and distribution of nine books, printed by pro-Kurdish Avesta Publications, media reported Sunday.

    The ban was imposed after the copies of the nine books were found at a place where two people were earlier detained as part of an investigation into the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Sirnak’s Idil district.

    “The said books are the ones which were published as doctoral dissertations at the world’s leading universities between 2003 and 2015. …Among the banned books are the the ones about Yazidis’ holy writings and Battle of Chaldiran. How on earth they are affiliated with terrorism? The other banned book is on the genocide in Iraq. This book consists of official reports of Human Rights Watch… and it is accredited with parliaments of several countries,” publisher’s editor-in-chief Abdullah Keskin told Duvar news portal.

    The original names of the banned books are as follows: “ Kan, İnançlar ve Oy Pusulaları; Cesur Adamların Ülkesine Yolculuk; Tasavvur Mu Gerçek Mi? Mahabad Kürt Cumhuriyeti Büyük Güçlerin Politikasında Kürtler 1941-1947; Mağdur Diasporadan Sınır-Ötesi Vatandaşlığa Mı?; Ülkemde Bir Yabancı; Çaldıran Savaşı’nda Osmanlılar Safeviler ve Kürtler; Tanrı ve Şeyh Adi Kusursuzdur: Yezidi Tarihinden Kutsal Şiirler ve Dinsel Anlatılar; Kürdistan Bayrağının Altında; Irak’ta Soykırım.”


    http://turkeypurge.com/turkish-court-bans-9-books-on-terror-charges
    #livres #censure #Turquie
    cc @isskein @tchaala_la

  • It’s Official: Linux Apps Are Coming to Chromebooks
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/05/google-confirms-linux-apps-support-chromebooks

    Users will soon be able to install Linux apps on Chromebooks, Google has confirmed. Google says it is adding support for Linux apps to Chrome OS to ’equip developers’ with the tools they need. This post, It’s Official: Linux Apps Are Coming to Chromebooks, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

  • Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-that-aided-harvey-weinstein-collected-information-on-former-obama-administration-officials/amp?__twitter_impression=true

    In June, 2017, Ann Norris, a former State Department official, received an e-mail containing an unusual proposal. Norris is married to Ben Rhodes, a former foreign-policy adviser to President Barack Obama and a prominent advocate of the Iran nuclear deal. In the e-mail, a woman who introduced herself as Eva Novak and claimed to work for a London-based film company called Shell Productions asked Norris to consult on a movie that she described as “ ‘All the President’s Men’ meets ‘The West Wing’ ”: it would follow the personal lives of “government officials in the positions that determine war and Peace” during times of geopolitical crisis, including “nuclear negotiations with a hostile nation.” Recalling the exchange, Ann Norris said that she found Eva Novak’s request “bizarre,” and that she “never responded.”

    The e-mail appears to be part of an undercover campaign by an Israeli private-intelligence firm to discredit Obama officials who had been leading proponents of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The campaign was first reported, on Saturday, by the British newspaper the Observer. However, sources familiar with the effort and pages of documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that there is more to understand. Two of those sources told me on Sunday that the operation was carried out by Black Cube—a firm that was also employed by Harvey Weinstein and that offers its clients access to operatives from “Israel’s élite military and governmental intelligence units,” including the Mossad.

  • THE U.S. QUIETLY RELEASED AFGHANISTAN’S “BIGGEST DRUG KINGPIN” FROM PRISON. DID HE CUT A DEAL ?
    https://theintercept.com/2018/05/01/haji-juma-khan-afghanistan-drug-trafficking-cia-dea

    IN OCTOBER 2008, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration heralded the arrest of Haji Juma Khan on narcotics and terror charges. His capture, they said, dealt a punishing blow to the Taliban and the symbiotic relationship between the insurgent group and Afghan drug traffickers.

    Yet, unbeknownst to all but the closest observers of the largely forgotten Afghanistan War, Khan was quietly released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody last month. After nearly 10 years at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, the terms of his release – like nearly everything else about his case – remain shrouded in secrecy.

    The secrecy reflects the U.S. government’s conflicted relationship with Khan. Before his arrest, the alleged drug trafficker worked with the CIA and the DEA, received payments from the government, and, at one point, visited Washington and New York on the DEA’s dime. After his arrest, federal prosecutors sought to link Khan’s support for the Taliban to a suicide bombing, as well as a separate attack on a Kabul hotel that killed one American. A trap set by the top DEA official in Kabul ultimately led to his arrest.

    Since 2012, the filings in Khan’s case have been under seal. As a result, it is impossible to determine whether he pleaded guilty to any of the charges against him, whether he received a sentence or was ordered to pay restitution to victims, or, upon his release last month, whether he was deported or allowed to remain in the United States.

  • CIA agents in ’about 30 countries’ being tracked by technology, top official says
    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/22/politics/cia-technology-tracking

    CIA officers working overseas used to expect to be followed after hours by adversarial spies hoping to find their sources. But now, foreign spies often don’t need to bother because technology can do it for them, said Dawn Meyerriecks, deputy director of the CIA’s science and technology division. Digital surveillance, including closed-circuit television and wireless infrastructure, in about 30 countries is so good that physical tracking is no longer necessary, Meyerriecks told the audience at (...)

    #CIA #Strava #smartphone #géolocalisation #surveillance

  • Indigenous man who lived on tree for two years in India given land for home | PLACE
    http://www.thisisplace.org/i/?id=adffd15f-57f6-4540-92ac-f4724deb87c6

    An indigenous man who lived in a tree house for two years after his home was damaged in a south Indian forest, has been given a plot of land, an official said, in a case that highlights the slow progress in recognising the rights of forest dwellers.

    Gajja, who belongs to a tribal community in the southern state of Karnataka, has lived on a platform he built on a mango tree in the forest to keep safe from elephants.

    This week, following a local newspaper report about his plight, officials gave him a plot of land.

    “He had already been conferred with forest rights, but he was unaware of the fact, and had continued to live on the tree,” said D. Randeep, the deputy commissioner in Mysuru city.

    “We have now allocated some land near that tree, so he can build a hut. If he is willing to live outside the forest, we can give him compensation and allot him a proper home,” he said.

    Gajja, who gathers honey and other forest products, is among millions of people who depend on forests for a living.

    More than a fifth of India’s 1.3 billion people were expected to benefit from the 2006 Forest Rights Act covering vast areas of forest land roughly the size of Germany.

    The law gives indigenous people and forest dwellers rights to manage and govern their traditional forests and resources, individually and as a community.

    #inde #forêt #foncier #peuples_autochtones #territoire

  • Official Ubuntu 18.04 T-Shirt Goes on Sale
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/04/ubuntu-18-04-t-shirt

    The official Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ’Bionic Beaver’ t-shirt has been added to Caonical’s online shop. The dark grey shirt carries the bionic beaver mascot in orange. This post, Official Ubuntu 18.04 T-Shirt Goes on Sale, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

  • Revealed: Israel ’struck advanced Iranian air-defense system’ in Syria - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-targeted-advanced-iranian-air-defense-system-in-syria-strike-1.60118

    The Israeli military targeted an advanced Iranian air-defense system at the T4 base in Syria last week and not just attack drone deployment, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
    The report noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strike after conferring with U.S. President Donald Trump, in hopes of preventing Iran from using the anti-aircraft battery against Israeli jets carrying out strikes in Syria.

    Haaretz previously reported that the strike apparently targeted armaments aside from the drones, which could have reduce the Israel Air Force’s freedom of operation in Syrian airspace.
    Earlier this week, a senior Israeli military official admitted to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that Israel targeted T4, adding that “it was the first time we attacked live Iranian targets - both facilities and people.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran began bolstering air defenses following an escalation triggered by Iran sending an armed drone into Israeli airspace that resulted in retaliatory Israeli strikes in Syria. An Israeli F-16 war plane that carried out airstrikes on the Syrian base was shot down during retaliatory strikes.

    The Israeli official told the New York Times that the incident “opened a new period,” adding that “this is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel - not by proxy.

  • Egypt to decline any request by US to send troops to Syria: former intelligence official - Egypt Independent
    http://www.egyptindependent.com/egypt-to-decline-any-request-by-us-to-send-troops-to-syria-former-

    In response to a recent report published by American newspaper The Wall Street Journal regarding an alleged request by the United States to Egypt to send armed forces to Syria, former undersecretary of Egypt’s General Intelligence Mohammad Rashad said that Egypt will summarily decline any such invitation.

    “The Egyptian Armed Forces are not mercenaries [and cannot be] leased or ordered by foreign states to deploy forces in a certain area. This is not acceptable and no one […] should dare to direct or give instructions to Egypt’s army,” Rashad told Egypt Independent.

    #syrie #mercenaires

  • Install #git on #mac
    https://hackernoon.com/install-git-on-mac-a884f0c9d32c?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    Before starting, I should note that this is almost directly taken from the Official Git Documentation. The difference is that I am using GIFs to show the two main ways to install Git on Mac.Option 1The easiest way to install Git is to install the Xcode Command Line Tools which comes with Git among other things. On Mavericks (10.9) or above you can do this simply by trying to run the git command from the Terminal.Open a Terminal on your Mac. Now, type the following command into your Terminal.git —versionIf you don’t have git installed already, it will prompt you to install it.Read and agree to the Command Line Tools License Agreement and you are ready to use Git!Option 2Download Git here.2. Once your download is finished, open the file and go through the installation process.3. (...)

    #install-git #git-on-mac #install-git-on-mac

  • Reuters Journalists Will Face Trial for Work in Myanmar - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/world/asia/myanmar-reuters-reporters-trial.html

    A Myanmar judge ruled Wednesday that two Reuters reporters who documented a massacre of Rohingya Muslims will face trial for violating the Official Secrets Act after they were arrested with papers handed to them by the police.

    Judge Ye Lwin, who heard testimony from 17 prosecution witnesses over three months of preliminary hearings, ruled that there was enough evidence to proceed with the case against the reporters: U Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, and U Wa Lone, who turned 32 on Wednesday.

    In a case that has provoked international condemnation, the two were arrested Dec. 12 while they were investigating the September massacre of 10 Rohingya civilians in the Rakhine State village of Inn Din. The massacre occurred during violent attacks on Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military and local Buddhist mobs that drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into Bangladesh in what is broadly seen as calculated ethnic cleansing.

    In uncovering the massacre, the two reporters obtained photos of the 10 victims kneeling before their execution with their hands tied behind their backs. They also found the mass grave where the victims were buried.

    The judge’s decision in Yangon came barely 12 hours after the military announced that four army officers and three soldiers had been sentenced to 10 years at hard labor for their roles in the massacre.

  • Conflict displaces almost 700,000 Syrians in deadly first months of 2018 | Global development | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/10/conflict-syria-displaces-almost-700000-people-2018-un-united-nations

    Almost three-quarters of a million Syrians have been forced out of their homes by fighting in the first months of 2018, according to the senior UN official coordinating the crisis response.

    #syrie #réfugiés #migrations #déplacés
    With growing anticipation that retaliatory US strikes may be launched imminently in response to the latest suspected use of chemical weapons in Douma, Panos Moumtzis, regional humanitarian coordinator for the country’s crisis, issued a bleak picture of continuing large-scale displacement.

    “I am deeply concerned about the continuing massive displacement of close to 700,000 Syrians since the beginning of the year due to ongoing hostilities in the country,” Moumtzis said in a statement.

  • The Oldest Tree in Paris – The Robinia Tree of Square René Viviani – The Treeographer
    https://thetreeographer.com/2018/04/06/oldest-tree-in-paris-robinia-of-square-rene-viviani

    The tree was first planted in 1601, more than 400 years ago. Jean Robin, a well known botanist and doctor, brought many exotic plants back to Europe from his travels in the French American colonies. He was the official gardener of the king, and was later entrusted to set up the Jardin des Plantes botanical garden, where the second oldest tree in the city (also a robinia) was planted by his son.[...]

    When the tree threatened to collapse from the weight of its own trunk, a large v-shaped cement support was installed beneath it. Along with another iron beam that’s been poorly disguised as a tree trunk, this is the only thing that keeps the tree standing. While most robinias only grow to 10 meters (32 ft), this one now stands at more than 15 meters tall (50 ft).

    #arbre #arbre_vénérable #acacia_faux-robinier