This Is How a Shark Attack Saved a Man’s Life

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A man’s potentially fatal encounter with a shark saved his life, after doctors treating him for his injuries discovered he had cancer.

Eugene Finney was on a family holiday with his two children, aged 6 and 10, and his girlfriend on Huntington Beach, California, when he went for a swim and felt something “slam into his back” . . .

Returning to work in his home town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, he struggled with back and chest pain caused by the attack and visited [the] hospital, Boston CBS Local reported.

Doctors treating Mr Finney for his blunt force trauma wounds then confronted him with the news that they had discovered a stage one tumour on his right kidney, around the size of a walnut.

Medics were then able to operate on Mr Finney and remove the growth in its early stages. (Read more from “This Is How a Shark Attack Saved a Man’s Life” HERE)

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This Is What Stephen Hawking Claims Could ‘Wipe out Humanity’

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By Andrew Griffin. Stephen Hawking has warned that artificially intelligent machines could kill us because they are too clever.

Such computers could become so competent that they kill us by accident, Hawking has warned in his first Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.

A questioner noted that Professor Hawking’s ideas about artificial intelligence are seen as “a belief in Terminator-style ‘Evil AI’”, and asked how he would present his own beliefs.

“The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence,” Professor Hawking said. “A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.

“You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.” (Read more from “This Is What Stephen Hawking Claims Could ‘Wipe out Humanity'” HERE)

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‘Psychic Robot’ System Guesses Intentions From Your Movements

By Devin Coldewey. If we are to have artificial intelligence assisting us in driving, working and walking around, it will need to understand not just what we’re doing but what we mean to do.Researchers, at the University of Illinois at Chicago have created a system that does just that, albeit on a limited scale.

By carefully watching the motion of a person’s arm, the system determines what the intention of that arm is — to pick up an object, for example — and can tell when that intention has changed or been disturbed.

“We call it a psychic robot,” said lead author Justin Horowitz in a news release. “If you know how someone is moving and what the disturbance is, you can tell the underlying intent — which means we could use this algorithm to design machines that could correct the course of a swerving car or help a stroke patient with spasticity.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Private Database Lets Police Skirt License Plate Data Limits

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For years, police nationwide have used patrol car-mounted scanners to automatically photograph and log the whereabouts of peoples’ cars, uploading the images into databases they’ve used to identify suspects in crimes from theft to murder.

Nowadays, they are also increasingly buying access to expansive databases run by private companies whose repo men and tow-truck drivers photograph license plates of vehicles every day.

Civil libertarians and lawmakers are raising concerns about the latest practice, arguing that there are few, if any, protections against abuse and that the private databases go back years at a time when agencies are limiting how long such information is stored. (Read more from “Private Database Lets Police Skirt License Plate Data Limits” HERE)

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The Decline of Play and Rise in Children’s Mental Disorders

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Rates of depression and anxiety among young people in America have been increasing steadily for the past 50 to 70 years. Today, by at least some estimates, five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant.

The most recent evidence for the sharp generational rise in young people’s depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders comes from a just-released study headed by Jean Twenge at San Diego State University. Twenge and her colleagues took advantage of the fact that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a questionnaire used to assess a variety of mental disorders, has been given to large samples of college students throughout the United States going as far back as 1938, and the MMPI-A (the version used with younger adolescents) has been given to samples of high school students going as far back as 1951. The results are consistent with other studies, using a variety of indices, which also point to dramatic increases in anxiety and depression—in children as well as adolescents and young adults—over the last five or more decades.

We would like to think of history as progress, but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950s.

The question I want to address here is why.

The increased psychopathology seems to have nothing to do with realistic dangers and uncertainties in the larger world. The changes do not correlate with economic cycles, wars, or any of the other kinds of world events that people often talk about as affecting children’s mental states. Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the turbulent 1960s and early ‘70s than they are today. The changes seem to have much more to do with the way young people view the world than with the way the world actually is. (Read more from “The Decline of Play and Rise in Children’s Mental Disorders” HERE)

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Girl, 10, Kills 800-POUND Monster Alligator With One Shot From Her Crossbow

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Armed with a loaded crossbow, 10-year-old Ella Hawk did not flinch when she faced off against an 800-pound, 13-foot alligator in Texas.

Ella, who has been hunting with her parents, Tony and Cindy Hawk, for a few years now, delivered a perfect shot above the scaly beast’s eyes, killing it on the spot . . .

In fact, the slain gator was big enough to rank No. 1 in the world in Trophy Game Records of the World’s database, according to the Victoria Advocate.

The 10-year-old had been preparing for last month’s hunting expedition by shooting her crossbow from an elevated position.

Once on location on the Guadalupe River, Ella’s training immediately kicked in and she quickly proved her mettle by felling the beast with a bolt to the head. (Read more from “Girl, 10, Kills 800-POUND Monster Alligator With One Shot From Her Crossbow” HERE)

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You’ll Never Guess What Burger King’s Halloween Burger Does to You

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The scariest part of Burger King’s Halloween Whopper doesn’t happen until after you eat it.

Something in the burger’s pitch-black bun turns eaters’ poop a ghastly bright green — sometimes for as long as three days . . .

Not everybody was amused by the frightening after-effects of the Halloween treat, with some even vowing to never eat the burger again.

“Yesterday I had the Halloween Whopper,” added Daniel Rodriguez. “Today my poop is green. Yesterday was the last time I’ll have the Halloween Whopper.”

It is unclear what ingredients in the black Whopper turn stool such a haunting color, but a spokesperson for the fast food giant told ABC news that the bun contains less than 1% food dye. (Read more from “You’ll Never Guess What Burger King’s Halloween Burger Does to You” HERE)

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American Airlines Captain DIES While Flying Plane With Over 100 Passengers

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An American Airlines pilot died after becoming ill on an overnight “red eye” flight from Phoenix to Boston, American Airlines confirmed to Today in the Sky.

The incident occurred about four hours into Flight 550, which then diverted to Syracuse and landed there around 7:10 a.m. Monday morning, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware . . .

While the death of a pilot during a flight could raise concern among uneasy fliers, the captain and first officer are each capable of flying commercial airliners alone. The Federal Aviation Administration requires two crew members in the cockpit at all times for just such an emergency.

“Pilots train for the incapacitation of another crew member,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot and now a consultant as head of Safety Operating Systems, “This would have been something the first officer was trained to deal with” . . .

Flight 550 was on an Airbus A320 and had 147 passengers and five crewmembers, according to American. The flight spent about four hours on the ground in Syracuse and then continued on to Boston after a replacement crew arrived to the aircraft in Syracuse. (Read more from “American Airlines Captain DIES While Flying Plane With Over 100 Passengers” HERE)

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Snowden: I’d Go to Prison to Return to the US

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Edward Snowden says he has offered to return to the United States and go to jail for leaking details of National Security Agency programs to intercept electronic communications data on a vast scale.

The former NSA contractor flew to Moscow two years ago after revealing information about the previously secret eavesdropping powers, and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years . . .

Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, Britain’s GCHQ and other intelligence agencies set off an international debate about spies’ powers to monitor personal communications, and about the balance between security and privacy. (Read more from “Snowden: I’d Go to Prison to Return to the US” HERE)

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Medical Miracle: Doctors Reattach Toddler’s Decapitated HEAD After Horrific Car Crash

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This child has made a miracle recovery after his HEAD was internally decapitated in a car crash . . .

The 16-month-old toddler was with his mum and nine-year-old sister Shayne when they collided head on with another vehicle at 70mph on September 15.

The child was airlifted from the site of the crash to a hospital in Brisbane.

The force from the collision was so intense that Jaxon’s head pulled apart from his neck in an internal decapitation, according to spinal surgeon Dr Geoff Askin.

Incredibly , the medics now have been able to reattach his head, reported 7NewsMelbourne. (Read more from “Medical Miracle: Doctors Reattach Toddler’s Decapitated HEAD After Horrific Car Crash” HERE)

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Author: Hillary Has a Long History of Beating up Bill Behind Closed Doors

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She’s on a mission to be a softer, warmer, funnier candidate — but according to a new book, the real Hillary Clinton is so volatile and prone to violent outbursts that she terrorizes staff, Secret Service agents and even her own husband.

In “The Clintons’ War On Women” (Skyhorse), out Oct. 13, political strategist Roger Stone details Hillary’s abusive behavior — dating back to the Clintons’ days in Arkansas, where Bill served as governor.

“Hillary Clinton has a long history of being domestically violent with Bill,” Stone writes. “Hillary has beaten Bill, hit him with hard objects, scratched and clawed him, and made him bleed.”

Stone, a controversial figure who recently decamped from Donald Trump’s campaign, also delves into the more fantastical rumors that have dogged the Clintons for years.

Accounts of marital discord, however, have been well-reported for decades. Even Bill Clinton’s former press officer Dee Dee Myers later admitted that she covered for the first lady. (Read more from “Author: Hillary Has a Long History of Beating up Bill Behind Closed Doors” HERE)

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