Google’s Robots Give Amazon’s Drones a Run For their Money (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Photo Credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google has snapped up the creator of the world’s fastest running robot and other eerily realistic animal-like machines supplied to the U.S. military.

The internet company’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics is latest in a string of robotics acquisitions in a mysterious initiative led by former Android chief Andy Rubin.

As Amazon readies a fleet of delivery drones, Boston Dynamics is Google’s biggest prize yet in the robot wars.

Among the creations to crawl, jump and gallop from its labs are Big Dog, a four-legged robot that can clamber over uneven terrain such as snowy forests, even when assailed by kicks from its makers, and Cheetah, which claims to hold the record for the fastest legged robot in the world, running at more than 29 miles per hour.

Many of Boston Dynamics’ robots have been developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense’s research unit, Darpa, making Google a military contractor, at least for now.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP’s ‘Young Guns’ Program Backs Pro-Abortion, Pro-Gay Marriage Candidates for Congress

/7 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Although the Republican Party Platform opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is backing and promoting through its “Young Guns” program two congressional candidates who are homosexual, and who support same-sex marriage and abortion.

In addition, one of the “Young Guns” candidates, Carl DeMaio, has received $15,000 from the political arm of House GOP leaders Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), while the other candidate, Richard Tisei, “has won the support of the entire House Republican leadership, including a $5,000 check from the PAC run by the vice-presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.),” reported the Washington Post.

Richard Tisei, who is “married” to his male partner Bernie Starr, in Edgartown, Mass., is running for a congressional seat in the 6th District in the Bay State. Carl DeMaio is running for a congressional seat out of San Diego, Calif.

DeMaio, who is openly gay, supports abortion and same-sex marriage. In a press release, he said, “I see myself as a ‘new generation Republican’ who wants to challenge the party to focus on pocket-book, economic and quality of life issues in a more positive and inclusive way, rather than issues that are, frankly, none of the government’s business in the first place.”

Tisei supports same-sex marriage and is pro-abortion, having received a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. The NRCC is spending money on television ads attacking Tisei’s opponent, Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), as is YG Action, a political action committee founded by former aides to House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), reported the Washington Post.

Read more from this story HERE.

China Imposes First-Ever West Coast Shellfish Ban

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: KUOW

Photo Credit: KUOW

China has suspended imports of shellfish from the west coast of the United States — an unprecedented move that cuts off a $270 million Northwest industry from its biggest export market.

China said it decided to impose the ban after recent shipments of geoduck clams from Northwest waters were found by its own government inspectors to have high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The restriction took effect last week and China’s government says it will continue indefinitely. It applies to clams, oysters and all other two-shelled bivalves harvested from the waters of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern California. U.S. officials think the contaminated clams were harvested in Washington or Alaska. Right now they’re waiting to hear back from Chinese officials for more details that will help them identify the exact source.

State and federal agencies oversee inspection and certification to prevent the shipment of tainted shellfish. Jerry Borchert of the Washington Department of Health said he’s never encountered such a ban based on the Chinese government’s assertion that these U.S. safeguards failed to screen out contaminated seafood.

“They’ve never done anything like that, where they would not allow shellfish from this entire area based on potentially two areas or maybe just one area. We don’t really know yet,” Borchert said.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Complete Waste’: Army Corps Flushed $5.4M on ‘Unusable’ Trash Incinerators, Probe Finds

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers paid $5.4 million for shoddy trash incinerators that were delivered years behind schedule and never used, leaving soldiers at an Afghanistan base with no other option than to keep burning waste in open-air pits, according to an internal probe.

The report from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko was released Monday. It found the failure to complete the trash incinerators left soldiers exposed to potential health hazards from the burn pits, and taxpayers, once again, with nothing to show for a multimillion-dollar investment.

“This project appears to have been a complete waste,” Sopko said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “Even worse, the open-air burn pit used instead of the incinerators put the health of our troops at risk.”

The base where the units were sent — Forward Operating Base Sharana in southeastern Afghanistan — was turned over to the Afghan government in October. According to the report, officials now expect the unused incinerators to be salvaged for “scrap.”

Sopko’s scathing report, the latest in a series of critical findings on Afghanistan spending, accused the Army Corps of paying the contractor in full for incinerators that were not only finished more than two years behind schedule but riddled with operational problems that rendered them “unusable.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Reports: ObamaCare Exchange Mistakenly Debiting Bank Accounts (+video)

/14 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it’s causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.

Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said.

The Bruners enrolled for insurance on the Washington Healthplanfinder website, last October. They say they selected the bill pay date to be December 24th. Instead the Washington Healthplanfinder drafted the 835 dollar premium Monday.

Josh Bruner started his own business this year as an engineering recruiter. They said it’s forced them to pay a lot of attention to their bills and their bank accounts.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chairman Senate Armed Services Cmte: We’ll Review Murray-Ryan’s Cuts to Military Retirees

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

After howls of protest from military groups over pension cuts in a House budget deal, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday promised to review the slash, the Military Times reported.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said his committee review along with an ongoing survey by a military commission may “further bear on this issue,” the newspaper said.

“A number of concerns have been raised about the provision in the Murray-Ryan budget agreement,” Levin said in a statement.

“The Senate Armed Services Committee is going to review this change after we convene next year, before it takes effect in December 2015.”

The provision would restrict the annual pay adjustment of military pensions for working-age military retirees to 1 percentage point less than the rise in consumer prices.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Disinformation Runs Deep – Sold On ‘A Trinity of Lies”

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

‘Obamacare was sold on a trinity of lies.”

That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next installment of Game of Thrones, comes from my National Review colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: “If you like your health insurance you can keep it, period.” The second leg in the tripod of deception was “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

But the third plank in the triad of disinformation hasn’t gotten much attention: Obamacare will save you, me, and the country a lot of money. This lie took several forms.

First, Obama promised on numerous occasions that the average family of four will save $2,500 a year in premiums. Where did that number come from? Three Harvard economists wrote a memo in 2007 in which they claimed that then-Senator Obama’s health-care plan would reduce national health-care spending by $200 billion. Then, according to the New York Times, the authors “divided [$200 billion] by the country’s population, multiplied for a family of four, and rounded down slightly to a number that was easy to grasp: $2,500.”

In September, the Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services used far more rigorous methods to predict that Obamacare would increase national health-care spending by $621 billion. Using Obama’s own math, that would mean — according to Chris Conover, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute and Duke University — each family of four in America will spend an additional $7,450 thanks to Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chinese Unmanned Spacecraft Lands on Moon

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGER

Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGER

China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon on Saturday, state media reported, in the first such “soft-landing” since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union in managing to accomplish such a feat.

The Chang’e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys.

China has been increasingly ambitious in developing its space programs, for military, commercial and scientific purposes.

It has moved in lock step with its emergence as a major global economic and political power.

“The dream for lunar exploration once again lights up the China Dream,” Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: ‘Silent Night’ Used to Push Gun Control

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Screenshot

Photo Credit: Screenshot

“Silent Night,” the iconic Christmas song about the birth of Jesus, is now part of the nation’s gun control debate.

Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, have produced a video that shows sad scenes at the Newtown, Conn., school shooting a year ago and asks, “How long do we have to wait for Congress to act?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Atheist Dies, Meets Jesus, Returns to Life (+video)

/18 Comments/in , /by

Ian_McCormack_MDIn 1982, Ian McCormack of the film The Lazarus Phenomenon was an adventurous 26-year-old. He was diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius (in the southwest Indian Ocean) one evening and was stung by five box jellyfish – one of the most venomous creatures in the world. Its poison can kill a person in four minutes. When an ambulance came, his body was completely paralyzed, and necrosis had started to set into his bone marrow.

On the way to the hospital, McCormack began to see his life flash before him. He knew he was near death. He was an atheist and didn’t know whether or not there was an afterlife. As he lay dying, he saw a vision of his mother, who was the only Christian in his family, praying for him. She encouraged McCormack to cry out to God from his heart and God would hear him and forgive him. He didn’t know what to pray, so he cried out that if God was real, God would help him pray. Instantly, God showed McCormack the Lord’s Prayer.

DEATH AND THE VERY DARK PLACE

The ambulance reached the hospital and they brought McCormack inside. The doctors tried to save his life by injecting anti-toxins and dextrose into his body, but it didn’t help. Within a few minutes, his body lay lifeless for about 15 minutes.

During this time, McCormack was in a very dark place, and he didn’t know where he was. As he reached out, he found he wasn’t touching anything. When he tried to touch his face, his hand would go right through it. McCormack began to sense that it wasn’t just a physical darkness, but a spiritual darkness. He had a cold eerie feeling that there was something or someone else there, and it or he was looking at McCormack.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: CBN