Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has announced the launch of the countries first satellite. It is believed the satellite is part of a wider military space program, to advance the country’s ballistic weapons capability.
Read More: AP News
Chinese Company Donates Drones to U.S. Police Departments
The Chinese Company, Shenzhen-based DJI Enterprise, has donated drones to U.S. Police departments. The drones are to be used in the surveillance of people violating social distancing restrictions.
WOOD TV reported:
On the manufacturer’s website, DJI uses examples of police agencies, like Daytona Beach, Florida police, who plan on using the drone’s loud speaker to disperse crowds to avoid the spread of COVID-19.
“As far as patrolling the streets and shouting messages … that’s not what these are for,” Kent County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Joel Roon told the news station.
More:
The drones are smaller than the current fleet and are equipped with a light and a speaker.
The decision to accept the drones was based more on opportunity than a specific mission.
Read More: Breitbart
Flaw in iPhones and iPads May Have Allowed Hackers Access for Years
A flaw in Apple iPhones and iPads has been discovered that could have given hackers access to devices for years.
ZecOps, a San Francisco-based mobile security forensics company discovered the issue whilst investigating a sophisticated cyber attack against a client in 2019.
Apple has said they have fixed the issue with their Mail App. To activate the hack a black email was sent that would trigger a crash and reset of the operating system, this then opened the door to the hackers to steal your data.
Read More: Reuters
Violence Flares In Paris’ Northern Suburbs Over Lockdown
For three nights violence has flared up between youths and police in the northern suburbs of Paris. The violence has been caused by the growing tensions in the strict lockdown to halt the spread of coronavirus. An “explosive cocktail” of poverty, harsh police tactics, unemployment, the health crisis has worsening has led to the violence.
The neighbourhood has seen much violence in recent years. The area has a high African and North African population. Young black men are more likely to be stopped and searched by police, resulting a culture of animosity and distrust.
“When there are people out in the streets, police abuses are less likely to go unnoticed,” a local social worker explains. “But with residents locked up at home, the police have become more violent and arbitrary.”
He adds: “Of course, most officers do their work conscientiously. But it only takes a few bad apples eager to settle scores for things to get out of hand very fast.”
The poorer suburbs of Paris have been hit particularly hard by Covid-19. As health care provision is poorer in these areas. Residents are angry as it is workers from these working class areas who have kept the city functioning. Many wealthy Parisians have fled the city, or are working from home.
“Nurses, cashiers, caregivers, street cleaners, security agents, delivery men… Basically all the people who prop up the country today, all those who hold the front line and put themselves in danger, they come from the working-class districts, from [Seine-Saint-Denis]!” said Stéphane Peu, a local communist lawmaker, in an interview with Le Monde.
Read More: France 24
Harvard Professor Calls Homeschooling “Dangerous” and Causes “White Supremacy”
Prof. Elizabeth Bartholet a law professor at Harvard has called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling saying it is “dangerous”.
“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18?” Bartholet asked. “I think that’s dangerous. I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
Batholet also went on to argue that homeschooling was a “ticking bomb”, a breeding ground for white supremacy. She argued that the removal from the public school system was against the human rights of the child and a threat to democracy.
“Many homeschool precisely because they want to isolate their children from ideas and values central to public education and to our democracy. Many promote racial segregation and female subservience. Many question science. Many are determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives,” she claims.
She is also concerned about the majority of homeschooling families being religious.
“[S]urveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families (by some estimates, up to 90 percent) are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture,” Harvard Magazine warns. “Bartholet notes that some of these parents are ‘extreme religious ideologues’ who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy.”
Her essay fails to consider the many studies into the educational and social benefit of homeschooling. And provides no proof that homeschooling leads to an increased risk of child abuse, racism or white supremacy.
Read More: The Daily Wire
Donald Trump’s Bible
Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists Arrested
Hong Kong officials carried out a sweeping operation this weekend arresting a number of high profile individuals who were at the centre of the pro-demoncracy demonstrations which took the city by storm this last year.
Among those attested were business tycoon and founder of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai. Also former lawmakers Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung, Au Nok-hin and current lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung.
“Finally I’ve become a defendant. How do I feel? I’m very much relieved,” Lee, known as the father of democracy in Hong Kong, told media after he was bailed.
“For so many years, so many months, so many good youngsters were arrested and charged, while I was not arrested. I feel sorry about it,” the 81-year-old barrister and founding chairman of the city’s first political party said.
The rallies and demonstrations have died down party due to exhaustion, and arrests; but more recently due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Beijing have refused to accede to the protesters’ demands. These include free elections, as well as a full investigation into police conduct during the protests and an amnesty for the 70,000 people who were arrested in connection with the demonstrations, many of them under 20.
Read More: France 24
Lou Dobbs: FBI Knew Russia Dossier Was Disinformation
Ex CIA Agent Discusses the Threat of China vs Russia
Adm. Giroir Outlines Public Health Infrastructure to Reopen America
Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health has outlines the plans to develop a broad-based infrastructure consisting of testing, and contact tracing to control the spread of Coronavirus once the President reopens the country.
“Let me put it into context: All of the testing that we’ve done thus far is testing for the virus in your nose or nasopharynx, meaning you’re actively infected with the virus,” Giroir said when asked about the testing scaling up especially on the serological side. “The antibody test will get us an idea of if you have been infected in the past and are presumably—not 100 percent certain but probably by all known medical computation—that you would be immune to getting the virus again at least in the intermediate term. It is an important component, but it is not really the whole foundation of where we’re going. I call it a component because it will tell us who had the virus and give us a good sort of understanding of what happened, but we still expect only a minority of people will have had the virus and have recovered from it. The outer estimates—and again we don’t know—maybe it’s as much as five or ten percent in some places, and that’s going to be very important to know who those five or ten percent of people are both for themselves and others, but it’s not the total solution.
“To get everyone back together, and I’m sorry to be geeky; it’s very important to have a number of things in place,” Giroir said. “Number one, surveillance. So is this virus circulating in the country? Right now, I think we had 22,000 new cases yesterday. But as it gets lower, sort of is it circulating and where is it circulating? This is apparent from both testing and what the CDC says would be syndromic surveillance, like if you come in with a cough and a fever and influenza-like illness. This is a very good system to understand. In the summer, if you see people like that, it’s not flu—it’s going to be COVID-19. The second component is actively testing people with symptoms. That’s what we’re doing now. But we need it on a sort of generally available sort of scale. It depends on how many cases there are. If there’s 20,000 cases, or let’s say there’s 10,000 cases a day in the U.S., then you need 10,000 tests and you probably need to oversample. For every positive test, you want five to ten negative tests. So, then for every positive person you’re going to contact trace four to five people. So that’s kind of the milieu of what happens—surveillance, testing, and contact tracing is really defining it, plus the antibody on the other side. As I said last week, we are going to have for a test—we’re going to be in the range of the number of tests that we need to do this in a very short period of time, just a few weeks.”
Read More: Breitbart
President Trump Signs Order to Mine Space
President Trump has signed an executive order which will allow the U.S. to mine the moon for minerals.
The hope would be that mining the moon would extend our ability to travel into space, in particular a launch pad to Mars.
Scientists have also pointed to the depletion of mineral resources on earth. It is thought lunar minerals could help with our need to build renewal energy sources, and long life batteries. Such technologies require rare minerals, which we have only a limited supply of on earth.
“Metals such as lithium or cobalt – which you need – are mainly in places like China, Russia or Congo. And it’s difficult to get them.” said Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Sussex University.
Read More: BBC
Apple and Google Unite to Contact Trace Covid-19
The big tech giants Apple and Google are teaming up to help develop technology to contact users if they have been in contact with someone who has Covid-19.
Initially they hope to work with third party apps.
However, they hope the need for users to download an app will not be needed as users will be encouraged to have such a feature as standard.
They hope to use bluetooth technology to trace who a person has been in contact with, how close and for how long. This data would then determine the risk that a person could have contracted the virus.
However, many are alarmed at the privacy concerns us technology poses.
“Privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” Apple and Google said in a joint statement.
“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyse.”
President Trump said his administration needed time to consider the development.
“It’s very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom,” he said during a White House press conference.
“We’re going to take… a very strong long at it, and we’ll let you know pretty soon.”
Read More: BBC
President Trump’s Easter Message
VP Pence is Blocking Health Officials from Appearing on CNN
The Vice President is blocking top health officials from appearing on CNN, until the network airs the President’s daily briefings in full.
“When you guys cover the briefings with the health officials then you can expect them back on your air,” a representative for Pence told CNN.
CNN was one of several networks to stop airing the briefings in the entirety claiming the President’s information was not always accurate.
Read More: Yahoo