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Fun times, tan lines, and the threat of tick-borne diseases. Apparently, this is what summer has got in store for us this year. As if blacklegged ticks in the country aren’t already teeming with enough pathogens to make us go crazy, there’s a new tick infection to add to the list — Powassan virus. Rumor has it, it’s even worse than Lyme disease. What Is Powassan Virus? […]

ATHENS A Greek court on Thursday blocked a second extradition request by Turkey for the final two soldiers among a group of eight who fled to Greece following a failed coup attempt last year, drawing an angry rebuke from Ankara. The drawn-out case has highlighted often strained relations between Greece and Turkey, NATO allies which remain at odds over issues from territorial disputes to ethnically-split Cyprus. Turkey […]

Figure 1: An X-ray diffraction image of a chip package containing four multi-stacked silicon die. The thickest silicon die (300 µm thick) is the large flat stripe, which experiences the least warpage as it is glued to the package lead frame (lead frame not imaged). The three “wiggly” strips are individual transmission section images for each of the three remaining die (each 50 µm thick) stacked upon […]

One of the EU’s most senior officials has called for a ceasefire in the verbal hostilities over Brexit with Theresa May, warning that looming talks could become “impossible” if calm is not restored. The intervention by Donald Tusk, European Council president, marks a concerted effort to defuse escalating tension between Brussels and London after the UK prime minister accused EU officials of trying to sabotage her election […]

MOSCOW Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Thursday that authorities in Russia were stopping him going abroad to seek urgent medical treatment after an attack that left him mostly blind in one eye. Navalny said the authorities had unexpectedly issued him with an international passport of the kind Russians need to travel abroad after refusing to do so for the last five years. That had given him […]

Microsoft looks ready to widen its Cortana Skills Kit availability as of next week, simultaneous with its Build 2017 developer conference in Seattle. Microsoft has published its schedule and session descriptions for many of its Build 2017 talks via its official Build schedule builder mobile application. (I downloaded a version from the Google Play Store today for my Android phone.) The session list includes several Cortana Skills […]

WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel this month as part of his first foreign trip, wading directly into the tangled diplomacy of Middle Eastern politics, a senior administration official said on Thursday. The swing through the Middle East, added to a trip that includes a NATO meeting in Brussels on May 25 and the Group of Seven summit in Sicily on […]

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Scientists, including the controversial doctor Sergio Canavero, have transplanted the head of a rat onto the back of another, ahead of a plan to carry out the world’s first human head transplant later this year. Read more… More about Neurosurgery, Sergio Canavero, Real Time Video, Human, and Skeptic Via ASDA Alltop

RIO DE JANEIRO Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras still has a lot of work to do to root out corruption, a top federal prosecutor said on Thursday. Prosecutor Carlos Lima made the statement during a press conference detailing the Thursday arrests of executives who allegedly used a government amnesty program for foreign assets to bring in money paid to them by construction firms as bribes in return […]

US Treasuries came under pressure across the curve on Thursday, following a round of solid economic data and indications that the Federal Reserve is willing to look past the slowdown in economic growth at the start of this year. The 10-year yield was up 0.043 percentage point (4.3 basis points) at 2.363 per cent. Meanwhile, the policy-sensitive two-year yield ticked up 2.81 bps to 1.322 per cent. […]

Better known for his role in Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Dev Patel has proven equally adept at drama and comedy. Patel joined the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, as well as starred alongside acting royalty in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. This year, he’s starring alongside Jeremy Irons in The Man Who Knew Infinity, and Lion, with Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara. Lion is based […]

Wall Street opened slightly higher on Thursday, led by banks, after the Federal Reserve expressed confidence in the strength of the economy. However, gains were limited by a fall in technology and energy stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 25.49 points, or 0.12 percent, to 20,983.39. The S&P 500 gained 3.14 points, or 0.13 percent, to 2,391.27 and the Nasdaq Composite added 6.60 points, or 0.11 […]

BOGOTA A member of a United Nations team working on a project in Colombia to substitute illegal crops was kidnapped by dissident former FARC rebels who have rejected the peace process, U.N., police and military sources said on Thursday. The U.N. official Arley Lopez, a Colombian, was seized on Wednesday by gunmen close to Miraflores in southern Guaviare province, where coca cultivation has long formed a big […]

DUBAI // “Iron” Mike Tyson, the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, hopes his new Dubai gym will unearth a diamond in the rough that could go on to make a career in the fight game. Speaking at Atlantis The Palm on Thursday, the American said Dubai is the perfect venue to launch the Mike Tyson Academy of boxing and fitness. “People don’t have to fight […]

Cameron Mackintosh speaks with all the ease – but with little of the arrogance – of someone who has made a billion dollars doing what he loves. “I was a lucky boy to be born when I was,” he says. Coming from the third richest man in the British music industry, it is perhaps the understatement of the century. The run of stage smashes he produced in […]

Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s stalwart companion during six decades on the throne, is to step down from his public duties from the autumn, Buckingham Palace announced on Thursday. The Duke of Edinburgh’s decision was taken with the support of the Queen, the statement said. London was earlier gripped by speculation of an imminent announcement after reports senior staff of the royal household had been called to the […]

MANILA Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday his telephone conversation this week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss the Korean peninsula crisis was at the behest of his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump. Duterte said he spoke with Xi on Wednesday to convince him to play a bigger role in defusing tension in the Korean peninsula after North Korea test fired another missile early on Saturday. […]

Metadata is not ground truth. In the space of all possible partitions of a real-world social network, the lower peak corresponds to the social group partition given by the metadata. The higher peak corresponds to a leader-follower partition within the network. Image courtesy Peel, Larremore, and Clauset. Credit: Santa Fe Institute Community detection is an important tool for scientists studying networks. It provides descriptions of the large-scale […]

As noted earlier, while European stocks and US equity markets have ignored the commodity crash in China, which in addition to iron ore plunging limit down, also saw rubber tumble 7% lower, and steel rebar, coke, coking coal plunge over 6% …   … Axiom’s Gordon Johnson warns (as we did a month ago) that the worst is yet to come, and in fact, the “backdrop of […]

BEIJING The European Union wants China to help prevent migrants and refugees using Chinese-made inflatable boats to get into the bloc by stopping the boats reaching them, the European Commissioner for Migration said on Thursday. Dimitris Avramopoulos, speaking to reporters in Beijing after meeting Chinese Minister for Public Security Guo Shengkun, said the rubber boats used by people smugglers were made in China. “The rubber boats used […]

By Richard Cowan and Yasmeen Abutaleb | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. House of Representatives was set on Thursday for a cliffhanger vote to repeal Obamacare, as Republican leaders worked to deliver President Donald Trump a win for one of his top legislative priorities. House Republican leaders have expressed confidence the bill would pass and several party moderates who previously objected to it got behind it on Wednesday, […]

11:00 am Suppose we could be brave, Bryce, and go with a pic of Jeffery Lacker as our portrait for today 11:01 am Well, he stepped down from the Richmond Fed after fessing up to helping a colleague at a sister publication — Medley — on a story 11:02 am 11:03 am I could give you a rival’s analysis of the story 11:03 am It’s not the […]

By Sumeet Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG UBS Group AG (UBSG.S) plans to hire about 100 wealth management client advisors over the next two years in Hong Kong, the biggest wealth hub in Asia-Pacific, to grab a bigger share of the fast-growing mid-tier millionaire segment. The Swiss bank’s sharpening focus on the middle of the wealth market comes as some global banks including Standard Chartered (STAN.L) […]

Facebook‘s female engineers are less likely to get their code accepted than their male engineer counterparts. That’s according to an internal study reported by The Wall Street Journal, which puts in question Facebook’s efforts to foster diversity. At present, only 33 percent of Facebook’s workforce is composed of females. An astounding number by Silicon Valley’s standards, to be sure, but still an example of the lack of […]

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