Tesla to start production despite Kovid-19 ban

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reported that they will restart car production, despite the instructions for keeping workplaces and factories closed that need not remain open due to the new type of coronavirus (Kovid-19) outbreak.

In a statement on his Twitter account, Musk announced that Tesla will start producing electric cars again today, despite the Kovid-19 ban.

Elon Musk said, “I will be on the field like everyone else today. If someone is going to be arrested, I want that person to be me. ''

Volkswagen faces inquiry call over diesel fume tests on monkeys

Public criticism of the German auto industry has escalated after a report that an industry-sponsored entity commissioned a study of the effects of diesel exhaust using monkeys, while another study exposed humans to low levels of one type of air pollutant.

The German government said on Monday such studies were unjustifiable. The tests were reportedly commissioned by a research group funded by major German auto companies.

Volkswagen sought to distance itself from them, with its chairman saying that "in the name of the whole board I emphatically disavow such practices."

Silicon Valley county cancels Stingray surveillance contract

Silicon Valley, as seen from over north San Jose, facing southbound towards Downtown San Jose (Image from wikipedia.org)
Officials in Santa Clara County were about to acquire a new surveillance device known as a “Stingray,” but negotiations broke down after Harris Corporation wouldn’t agree to even the most basic public records responsibility.
Local lawmakers in Santa Clara had initially approved using federal funds to acquire the device in February. Little is known about the Stingray devices, which intercept phone data by mimicking cell phone towers, because local governments that are using them are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement by the corporations that make them, such as Harris.
READ MORE: NSA's telephone metadata collection not authorized by Patriot Act - appeals court
“After negotiations regarding contract terms, including business and legal issues, the County and Harris have been unable to reach agreement on a contract for the purchase of the System,”
wrote James Williams, the deputy county executive, to County Executive Jeffrey Smith. “Accordingly, the System will not be purchased at this time.”
County Executive Smith told Ars Technica the contract with Harris involved overly strict restrictions on disclosures through the public records process.
“What happened was, we were in negotiations with Harris, and we couldn’t get them to agree to even the most basic criteria we have in terms of being responsive to public records requests,”
said Smith.
“After many hours of back and forth it became clear that they weren’t going to consent to a contract in an attempt to keep everything secret and non-discoverable and that’s not something we could live with as a public agency. The negotiations are going to be terminated and the grant money will go to other purposes.
”

Santa Clara may be the first county in the US to refuse to accept Harris Corporation’s non-disclosure agreement, but it comes at a time when a number of investigations are underway into whether the technology breaks the law and violates the privacy rights of Americans.
“Stingrays are very invasive surveillance tracking technology and Santa Clara County was right to bring the issue of its acquisition to the Board of Supervisors and thoroughly consider the legal issues,
” the American Civil Liberties Union of North California said in a release on Wednesday.
READ MORE: FBI admits to using surveillance plans above Baltimore protests
The ACLU has identified 51 agencies in 21 states, plus the District of Columbia, as owning Stingray surveillance devices. Civil liberties groups that have been making public records requests in order to learn more about the technology have discovered that non-disclosure agreements exist between governments and companies like Harris. The ACLU has filed public records requests with more than 30 Florida law enforcement agencies, while the New York Civil Liberties Union has filed one with the sheriff’s office in Erie County, New York.
What is known is that these cell-site simulators trick phones into connecting to them by posing as cell phone towers – they can block or drop phone calls, and disrupt other mobile devices that use the same cell network, according to recent court disclosures. The ACLU said that law enforcement officials in Florida have used Stingray surveillance to track cell phone locations on more than 1,800 occasions, all without warrants.
The Harris Corporation’s Stingray is the most well-known device utilizing the controversial spying technology, which is used by the FBI, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency and many state and local police agencies. By impersonating cell towers, the devices force phones in the area to broadcast information that can be used to identify and locate users. Ars Technica reported earlier that the FBI is trying to “prevent disclosure” of how the devices are used in local jurisdictions across the US.
READ MORE: 'Stingray' surveillance devices can degrade service for any cell phone in vicinity - report
The ACLU’s recent disclosure included a court filing that uncovered the ability of a Stingray to negate cell phone calls by either downgrading mobile devices from 3G or 4G connectivity to 2G – enabling them to access identification and location information – or by using the devices’ “catch-and-release”
functions
“As each phone tries to connect, [the stingray device] will say, ‘I’m really busy right now so go use a different tower. So rather than catching the phone, it will release it,”
Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s chief technologist, told WIREDof the “catch-and-release” theory.
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Record number of Americans living abroad renounce citizenship

A record number of Americans gave up their US citizenship in the first quarter of 2015, according to IRS data. This is blamed on the taxation of income earned outside the US, along with laws expanding offshore bank account and asset reporting.

A total of 1,335 people renounced US citizenship during the first three months of the year, topping the previous record by 18 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The new figure puts 2015 on track to exceed last year's 3,415 renunciations, which is an all-time record.

READ MORE: New tax law pushes record number of Americans to renounce US citizenship

The data released by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) includes the names of those who renounced their citizenship, but not their reasons for doing so. However, it comes as the US government is becoming more aggressive when it comes to the assets of the estimated 6 million Americans who live abroad.

The United States is the only country within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.

American citizens who live abroad can exclude as much as $100,800 in earned income and can receive tax credits for payments to foreign governments. However, US tax liabilities can apply to children born to Americans abroad. In many cases, there are only partial offsets available for double taxation.

The paperwork involved for US citizens living abroad can be so complex that it requires professional help from accountants and lawyers – resulting in incredibly high fees for a relatively simple tax return.

READ MORE: 400% rise: Fee to renounce US citizenship goes up fourfold to $2,350

Although these laws were rarely enforced in the past, scrutiny of US citizens abroad has intensified due to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), passed by Congress in 2010.

The law, which took effect in July, requires US citizens with foreign assets in excess of $50,000 to report those assets every year. It also requires foreign financial institutions to report the incomes of their US customers to the IRS.

FATCA also requires US financial institutions to impose a 30 percent withholding tax on payments made to foreign banks which don't agree to identify and provide information on US account holders.

More than 140,000 banks and other firms have signed up to comply with FATCA. However, the law has prompted some banks to decline doing business with people who have ties to the US. If a bank mistakenly fails to report accounts held by US citizens, they can face steep penalties.

The Obama administration has praised the law as the “global standard”

in battling tax evasion, though it has come under fierce criticism from many, particularly from Americans living abroad.

Washington's tax policies for those living abroad have also put two high-profile personalities in the spotlight.

READ MORE: US Treasury pressures overseas banks with ‘financial imperialism’ over tax evader

Eduardo Saverin, a Brazilian-born co-founder of Facebook, gave up his US citizenship in 2012. The billionaire moved to Singapore, where top earners are taxed only 20 percent on their earnings, and where capital gains taxes are not be imposed.

At the time, it was estimated that Saverin's move would save him $67 million in US federal taxes. However, it was never officially confirmed that his citizenship renunciation was for tax purposes.

Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson – who was born in New York – said earlier this year that he would give up his US citizenship. The statement followed his settlement of a US tax bill which he described as “absolutely outrageous.”

However, his name was not on the list released Friday.

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ISIS sex atrocities: Child rape, forced virginity surgeries exposed in UN report

New evidence has revealed how Islamic State fighters buy children as sex slaves and force them into marriage. Girls from Iraq and Syria told a senior UN official they were stripped, sold, and made to undergo over a dozen virginity reparation surgeries.

“Girls are literally being stripped naked and examined in slave bazaars,”

by Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) fighters, Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict told the journalist during a briefing.

Bangura visited the Middle East between April 16 and 29 to talk to surviving rape victims. During her travels she stopped in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Bangura managed to interview women who had escaped and survived horrific sexual assaults at the hands of IS fighters.

READ MORE: Women and girls recall ‘systematic rape’ by ISIS militants – HRW

The girls and children were treated like cattle, she said. They are “categorized and shipped naked off to Dohuk or Mosul or other locations to be distributed among ISIL leadership and fighters.”

One of the victims was married off over 20 separate times and after each time was forced to get a surgery that would repair her virginity.

“Women and girls are at risk and under assault at every point of their lives,”

Bangura said, adding that this kind of violent treatment of women was actually encouraged as part of jihad.

“ISIL has institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives.”

READ MORE: ISIS releases horrifying sex slave pamphlet, justifies child rape

Horror and violence followed the girls “every step of the way…in the midst of active conflict, in areas under control of armed actors, at check-points and border crossings, and in detention facilities,”

according to Bangura.

Militants even use trafficking, prostitution and ransom plots as a way to raise money, she added.

Sexual violence is used by IS as a tactic to punish, humiliate, and demoralize local populations, making it easier to get information from them and displace them.

As a result of these atrocities, these victims of child rape are growing into “a generation of stateless children,”

who will remain vulnerable to IS recruitment tactics.

READ MORE: British women oversee ISIS abuse, sexual slavery of Yazidi girls

There have been reports that doctors have performed illegal abortions on pregnant girls as young as nine.

Many of the child victims are from the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq. Around 40,000 of them were reportedly kidnapped at gunpoint by IS militants last August. Other minorities at risk include Christians, Iraqi Turkmens and Shabaks.

A video surfaced on YouTube in November, showing IS militants laughing and joking while buying Yazidi slaves.

Many of the women have expressed feeling ashamed and are unable to restart their lives after surviving the brutal and humiliating attacks.

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Urban poor aging faster at cellular level - study

New blood tests show that poor populations in urban areas of the United States are actually aging faster at the cellular level than others, thanks to chronic stress connected to income and identity, according to a new study by scientists.

Conducted on a small group of black, white and Mexican adults in three Detroit neighborhoods, the tests were an attempt by scientists to learn what contributed to early aging-related diseases and excessive mortality rates in the urban poor.

The study of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic health inequality involved collaboration between social researchers and cellular biologists at Stanford University. It was based on blood test samples from 239 people, ages 25-64, with a community survey of residents in three Detroit neighborhoods. The blood tests were used to measure telomere length (TL), an indicator of stress-mediated biological aging.

READ MORE: 1 in 4 renters spend half their income on housing, a paycheck away from homelessness

Previous studies have argued that racial, ethnic and socioeconomic health inequality affect a person's mortality, but many of the studies were based on social research. The Stanford study marks the first collaboration between science and social research that measures telomeres – the caps on chromosomes that protect them from deteriorating.

The telomeres shorten with cell division and over time, as a person ages, they shorten to mark cellular death. Several large studies have argued that telomere length can be affected by stressful life experiences and contribute to early aging, leading to higher risk of infectious and chronic disease like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Other studies find no significant association between TL and mortality.

READ MORE: Double-dipping: Low wage-paying companies force taxpayers to fund benefits, says report

What the Stanford study found was that "the poverty rates for the study participants [in Detroit] were more than double the national rate for blacks and Mexicans and six times the national rate for whites.

" In Detroit, poverty rates are roughly comparable for whites, blacks and Mexicans at 55.6 percent, 50 percent and 52.3 percent, respectively. They found poor whites had the shortest TL compared to nonpoor whites, and that poor and lower middle class blacks had equivalent TL. But poor Mexicans had longer telomeres than Mexicans with higher incomes.

To account for the different results, the study's author reasoned that poor whites had the shortest TL readings because of an association between short TL and having less than a high school education. Researchers also considered the mass exodus of whites and jobs from Detroit, which led to a growing black population and a white population that then became a minority.

With the city experiencing an overall reduction in taxation, shrinking benefits from labor union membership and public pensions, the effects of urban austerity has taken a significant toll, particularly on whites.

"Lacking the financial resources, social networks, and identity affirmation of the past, remaining Detroit whites may have less to protect them from the health effects of poverty, stigma,"

said Dr. Arline Geronimus, visiting scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study and lead author of the report.

READ MORE: 'Endless & vicious cycle' of misdemeanor charges targeting America's poor - reportWhen reasoning why Mexicans might have longer telomeres, other factors were at play.

"If they're immigrants, then they come with a different cultural background and upbringing that didn't stress that as Mexicans they were somehow 'other' or 'lesser' than other Americans,

" Dr. Geronimus told The Huffington Post.

"They come with a set of support systems and with a cultural orientation that doesn't undermine their sense of self-worth,”

she added. “They then often live in these ethnic enclaves, many of them don't speak anything other than Spanish, and so they're not interacting with Americans who view them as 'other' or who treat them badly. It's not that they're immune to that treatment but they're not as sensitive to it and they also just don't experience it as often."

Geronimus said there are "effects of living in high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods -- the life experiences people have, the physical exposures, a whole range of things -- that are just not good for your health."

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UK economy: whats behind these royal figures?

In this edition of Business Line we take a closer look at the UK’s economy and its key components.
Why does the OECD say the country’s growth rate is the highest in the G7 leading nations? To answer this question we focus on the UK GDP growth, the country’s unemployment data and inflation figures.
We also speak to Euronews’ Sarah Chappell in London to find out people’s hopes and fears.
Finally, in our IT-dedicated segment, we’ll explore the consequences of expansive monetary policies on computer prices. Believe it or not, the QE has had in impact on the PC

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