Hundreds of thousands protest throughout Brazil →

Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians filled streets across the country Sunday to protest corruption and call for the impeachment of deeply unpopular President Dilma Rousseff and the jailing of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Protests were reported in every state in Brazil.
Wearing yellow and green Brazil national soccer team shirts and singing the national anthem, protesters denounced a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal involving bribes and kickbacks on fat contracts at the state-run oil company, Petrobras. That scandal has led to the jailing of politicians from Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and its coalition allies.
It was the fifth time in a year that protesters filled city streets across Brazil, and indications were that the number of protesters was higher than before. At least 450,000 people filled Sao Paulo’s central Paulista Avenue — more than in a 1984 human rights march that helped bring about the fall of Brazil’s dictatorship, the Datafolha polling institute reported.

What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget? →

The StingRay is a suitcase-size device that tricks phones into giving up their serial numbers (and, often, their phone calls and texts) by pretending to be a cell phone tower. The technical name for such a device is IMSI catcher or cell-site simulator. It retails for about $400,000. Harris and competitors like Digital Receiver Technology, a subsidiary of Boeing, sell IMSI catchers to the military and intelligence communities, and, since 2007, to police departments in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and more than 50 other cities in 21 states. The signals that phones send the devices can be used not just to locate any phone police are looking for (in some cases with an accuracy of just 2 meters) but to see who else is around as well. IMSI catchers can scan Times Square, for instance, or an apartment building, or a political demonstration.
Rigmaiden built a file hundreds of pages thick about the StingRay and all its cousins and competitors—Triggerfish, KingFish, AmberJack, Harpoon. Once he was able to expose their secret use—the FBI required the police departments that used them to sign nondisclosure agreements—the privacy and civil-liberties world took notice...
In the ongoing scrum over cell phone privacy, there are at least two major fields of play: phone-data encryption, in which, right now, Apple is doing its best not to share its methods with the government; and network security, in which the police and the military have been exploiting barn-door-size vulnerabilities for years. And it’s not just the government that could be storming through. The same devices the police used to find one low-rent tax fraudster are now, several years later, cheaper and easier to make than ever.

Are you pre-diabetic? 46% of California adults are, UCLA study finds →

Rates of diabetes have increased more than 175% nationally since 1980, according to federal data. It's now the seventh-leading cause of death in California.
The UCLA researchers used data from theNational Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to create a model that predicts pre-diabetes, based on factors such as race, height and weight. That model was then applied to data from the California Health Interview Survey, determining that 13 million adults in the state have either pre-diabetes or undiagnosed diabetes.
Up to 70% of those with pre-diabetes develop diabetes in their lifetime.
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But experts say there's hope of curbing the disease's spread. The vast majority of diabetes cases in California — upward of 90% — are Type 2, which is preventable. People can stave off developing diabetes by adopting a healthier diet and increasing physical activity, experts say.
The difficulty is that most people don't take action until it's too late.
"One of the biggest problems with pre-diabetes is that most people don't know they have it," said Dr. Susan Babey, the paper's lead researcher and a co-director of the Chronic Disease Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

More Than Half of What Americans Eat Is 'Ultra-Processed' →

“Processed” is not inherently an evil word. According to the Food and Drug Administration, the only time a food can be called fresh is when you’ve just ripped it out of the ground or off a tree and shoved it in your mouth. (Ok, you’reallowed to wash it, coat it, and use pesticides, too.) So bread, even the whole-wheat kind with the weird seeds in it, is processed. Frozen spinach is processed.
But that is not the kind of processing they’re talking about in this study. The researchers, from the University of São Paulo and Tufts University, defined “ultra-processed” as:
Formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular, flavors, colors, sweeteners, emulsifiers and other additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product.

Not to mention "fillers" which serve no value, whatsoever; they make us feel full, but offer no nutrition, so we get hungrier quicker, making us buy and consume more "food".

Setting the Record Straight on Fracking and Earthquakes →

Last year the U.S. Geological Survey released a flurry of reports on the topic of human-induced earthquakes. It is now clear there is a connection between oil/gas extraction and earthquake activity. However, the nature of that connection has been widely misunderstood and misreported, even by some of the most reputable publications in the world.
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Specifically, the connection between oil/gas extraction and earthquakes has been generally accepted since at least the 1960’s and plainly obvious for about the last decade. Although some politicians may still question the connection, I was building earthquake models during that time and can say with confidence that science does not.
If there was any question remaining, the recent case of Oklahoma should remove all doubt...

UN approves toughest sanctions on North Korea in 20 years →

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, reflecting growing anger at Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.
The United States and China, North Korea's traditional ally, spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions, which include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang; and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

The Most Important Exchange of Wednesday’s SCOTUS Abortion Arguments →

Wednesday’s oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, probably the most important Supreme Court abortion case since 1992, centered around one key question: Does a Texas law that forces abortion clinics to meet stringent new standards—in the name of shielding “women’s health”—impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy? In other words, would the law make it difficult, or maybe even impossible, for many Texas women to exercise their right to abortion? And if so, can the state wave away this issue by insisting, without much evidence, that such draconian regulations are still necessary to protect women?

Reentry groups invest in ex-inmates to break the cycle of crime →

According to Justice Department figures, about 650,000 people are released from state and federal prisons each year. Millions more are released from local jails annually, according to the Council of State Governments. After reports last year that 46,000 drug offenders in federal prisons could qualify for early release under revised sentencing guidelines, reentry organizations such as OAR have been bracing for a potential surge in clients.
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OAR’s life-skills classes focus on anger management, parenting and financial literacy. Other classes aim to help inmates understand the effects of crime and how to avoid the thought processes that lead to criminal behavior. These classes are particularly important, Cosby said, because criminal thinking — such as resistance to authority and an inability to delay gratification — is one of the main risk factors for returning to jail.