Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina resigned late Wednesday, hours after a judge issued an arrest warrant against the leader in connection to a growing corruption scandal that has plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the end of a brutal civil war.
Migrant Offshore Aid Station →
One group to donate to, if you're looking to help with the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.
As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East →
Those reaching Europe represent a small percentage of the 4 million Syrians who have fled into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, making Syria the biggest single source of refugees in the world and the worst humanitarian emergency in more than four decades.
As the fighting grinds into a fifth year, the realization is dawning on aid agencies, the countries hosting the refugees and the Syrians themselves that most won’t be going home anytime soon, presenting the international community with a long-term crisis that it is ill-equipped to address...
New law permits North Dakota cop drones to fire beanbag rounds from the sky →
There are so many problems (putting it mildly) for tackling this now: the political climate around policing, because of pre-existing problems with brutality and militarization (and, if nothing else, on this last, they're going to spend taxpayer money on toys like this? now? North Dakotans should demand the cost/benefit analysis...); difficulty of firing on an intended target from a mobile platform, especially if there's lag in the signal (any guesses how the public will respond when police accidentally fire--even "non-lethals"!--on bystanders?); little to no law around drone use, for public or private entities; mistrust and dread of drones (highly warranted; see above); relative ease of hacking drones (hey, police, you want to use those fancy, armed drones? better be ready to defend them from hackers willing to turn them on you, or just cause mayhem and throw egg on your face). North Dakota's not NYC or Chicago, so maybe they'll get away with it and provide a very favorable test case , but society-at-large is nowhere close to ready to dealing with this.
How Americans actually feel about stronger gun laws →
But how do people in the United States actually feel about the country’s gun laws as they currently stand? In short: There is a lot of disagreement about some proposals and gun ownership itself, but when it comes to a few particular areas, polls show Americans are still strongly in favor of adding new policies and restrictions.
Take three specific proposals: Adding background checks to private gun sales, banning people with mental illnesses from buying guns and creating a federal database to track gun sale. Public support for these changes range from very strong to overwhelming, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July.
How ISIL Out-Terrorized Bin Laden →
Longer, but great read.
The Islamic State’s brutality and its insistence on apocalypse now and caliphate now set it apart from al-Qaeda, of which it was a part until 2014. We’re used to thinking of al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden as the baddest of the bad, but the Islamic State is worse. Bin Laden tamped down messianic fervor and sought popular Muslim support; the return of the early Islamic empire, or caliphate, was a distant dream. In contrast, the Islamic State’s members fight and govern by their own version of Machiavelli’s dictum “It is far safer to be feared than loved.” They stir messianic fervor rather than suppress it. They want God’s kingdom now rather than later. This is not Bin Laden’s jihad.
IoT for food and water: Here’s what the future looks like →
Some really cool technologies being experimented with, aided by small and cheap sensors:
In the near future, IoT will drive tremendous innovation in the way our food is grown, processed, distributed, stored, and consumed. Plants and animals will literally have a “voice.” Not a human voice, per se, but a voice based on data that can tell people, computers, and machines when, for example, they are thirsty, need more sun, require medicine, or need individual attention.
Seventeen-year-old sentenced to 11 years in prison for pro-ISIS Twitter account →
Intentionally recruiting, or aiding recruitment, seems like "material support" to me. But this is a teenager. And an 11 year sentence...
Today, a federal court sentenced a 17-year-old Virginia resident named Ali Shukri Amin to 11 years and four months in prison for supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, commonly known as ISIS. Amin ran the @Amreekiwitness Twitter account, which published pro-ISIS messages to a relatively small following, as well as directing followers how to make Bitcoin donations to the group. In one effort that proved particularly crucial to the prosecution's case, Amin arranged for an ISIS supporter to travel to Syria. All of Amin's efforts were conducted from within the United States, and there's no evidence that he ever took part in violent acts or intended to do so.