San Francisco Combats the Stench of Urine With Pee-Repellent Paint

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Don’t get into a pissing match with walls in San Francisco.

The city’s Public Works agency is testing a pee-repellant paint on walls in areas that have been saturated with urine. Anyone urinating on the specially treated walls will get the spray splashed back onto them.

San Francisco’s director of public works, Mohammed Nuru – whose Twitter handle is @MrCleanSF – got the idea when he read on social media about the use of the paint in Hamburg, Germany’s nightclub district to stop beer drinkers from relieving themselves in the street.

The paint, called Ultra-Ever Dry, is sold by Ultratech International Inc and is billed as a superhydrophobic coating that will repel most liquids.

“The urine will bounce back on the guys pants and shoes. The idea is they will think twice next time about urinating in public,” said Rachel Gordon, a Public Works Department spokeswoman. She said the super-hard coating made the “bounce back” effect much stronger than when peeing on a regular wall. (Read more from “San Francisco Combats the Stench of Urine With Pee-Repellent Paint” HERE)

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Animal-Rights Activists Arrested in Multi-State Crime Spree

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Two animal-rights activists were arrested Friday and charged with terrorizing the fur industry during cross-country road trips which they released about 5,740 mink from farms and vandalized homes and businesses of industry, the FBI said.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Joseph Brian Buddenberg, 31, and Nicole Juanita Kissane, 28, both of Oakland, California. They both were charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Friday said the two caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages during 40,000 miles of cross-country trips over the summer and into the fall of 2013.

“Whatever your feelings about the fur industry, there are legal ways to make your opinions known,” U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said in a statement. “The conduct alleged here, sneaking around at night, stealing property and vandalizing homes and businesses with acid, glue, and chemicals, is a form of domestic terrorism and can’t be permitted to continue.”

Buddenberg and Kissane are accused of sneaking onto farms in Idaho, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota to free mink. They also allegedly destroyed breeding records as well. In one case, they released a bobcat from a farm in Montana, according to the FBI. (Read more from “Animal-Rights Activists Arrested in Multi-State Crime Spree” HERE)

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Elusive ‘Snowbird Bandit’ Is Former LAPD Detective, Authorities Say

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A retired Los Angeles Police Department detective is the so-called Snowbird Bandit who’s responsible for a string of bank robberies across Orange County, authorities say.

Randolph Bruce Adair, 70, was arrested Wednesday in Rancho Santa Margarita in connection with five robberies this year . . .

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department says Adair’s family members contacted deputies alerting them that they had information about the robberies.

Adair robbed the First Citizens Bank in Rancho Santa Margarita Tuesday for the second time in a two-month span, according to City News Service. Adair reportedly used a weapon to threaten the tellers.

During some of his robberies, Adair had displayed a revolver as he demanded cash. During a robbery at a Wells Fargo in Mission Viejo in early June, he was seen carrying a white pouch with the word “medic” on it. Adair was also named in robberies in Monarch Beach and Ladera Ranch. (Read more from “Elusive ‘Snowbird Bandit’ Is Former LAPD Detective, Authorities Say” HERE)

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20% of This City Uses This Site to Cheat on Spouses; Hackers Promise to Release Cheaters’ Names

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By Rob Quinn. Ottawa, best known as the capital of Canada, also features the National Gallery of Canada, the annual Bluesfest, winter skating on the Rideau Canal—and, perhaps, a staggering amount of illicit sex.

Recently hacked affair hookup site Ashley Madison has 189,810 Ottawans on its books, which is roughly 20% of the city’s population and the highest sign-up rate for the site in Canada and possibly the world, according to Reuters.

“My G_d, my phones will be busy,” a private investigator told the Ottawa Sun after hackers calling themselves the “Impact Team” threatened to put details of the site’s 37 million users online. (Read more from “20% of This City Reportedly Has an Account on This Site That Allows You to Cheat on Spouses” HERE)

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Identities Now Revealed in Ashley Madison Attack

By Joe Kovacks. The odds were 37 million to 1, but a Massachusetts man is the first unlucky person to be publicly identified in connection with the recent hack on the popular online adultery site Ashley Madison, whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

According to the Enterprise in Brockton, Massachusetts, the local resident’s name, profile ID, home address, email address and a “list of fantasies” were included in a manifesto message as an example of the information hackers had learned.

The information revealed is “intensely personal.”

“I have only two personal interests on this site,” the man’s profile reads. “Making sure that you are comfortable with me should I be so fortunate to hold your attention and making sure I take the role of discretion to an artform. I mean isn’t this why we are here, to be as discreet as possible?”

WBZ-TV in Boston reports, “Among the data released about the Brockton client of Ashley Madison: His user ID is ‘Heavy73′; he listed himself as ‘married/attached’; he joined the site the day after Valentine’s Day, 2014; he likes ‘cuddling & hugging’ and is into ‘discretion & secrecy.’” (Read more from this story, “Encouraging People to Cheat on Spouses” HERE)

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Franklin Graham Weighs in on ‘Ashley Madison’

Franklin Graham’s Facebook post reads:

The Bible says, “be sure your sin will find you out.” Ashley Madison, the website for people who want to cheat on their spouses was hacked this weekend. Their slogan is: “Life is short. Have an affair.” Hackers threatened to reveal personal data related to 37 million users. I have news for all those worried cheaters out there wringing their hands—God already knew! His holy Word says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). Times may have changed, but God’s laws and standards never change—all sin has a price. The New York Daily News calls this an “‪#‎adultery‬ website.” Isn’t it a shame that immorality is such big business?

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Pope Francis to Be Tried by Sanhedrin

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A re-established and self declared Israeli Sanhedrin, the religious High Court composed of 71 sages, has declared that it is putting Pope Francis on trial unless he retracts his statement that the Jews have no right to the land of Israel or to Jerusalem.

In February 2013, the Vatican officially recognized the “State of Palestine” but more significantly, the Vatican signed a treaty in June with “Palestine” in which the Holy See switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the “State of Palestine”. This treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state and as such, constitutes an official recognition.

The trial and judgment will be on September 20th, 2015. If Pope Francis chooses to ignore the summons, he will be judged in absentia.

The Sanhedrin sent a letter to Pope Francis in reaction to the Vatican’s recent support of the Palestinian Authority’s unilateral moves to declare themselves a nation, reported the Hebrew magazine Matzav Haruach on June 24.

The letter stated:

“Because the Vatican recognized the organization known as the Palestinian Authority as a nation, and has begun to refer to it as a nation in its documents. His honor has named the head of said authority as an ‘Angel of Peace’, as was explained by a spokesman for the Vatican, that his intention was to encourage Abu Mazen to advance towards peace. These actions, to our great dismay, are consistent with a long series of actions and stances that are as in the days of the Roman Catholic Religion, that swore to persecute Israel because we refused to accept their Messiah as the Messiah of Israel, and to renounce our faith. The recent announcements and actions of the Vatican are a rebuke to the Jewish Nation and to the Bible, which you use to interpret the prophecies, as if God has abandoned his original Nation of Israel. Reality has proven the opposite to be true.”

“We require from you an apology for your recognizing as a nation those who stole the land, those who are known as the Palestinian Authority, and we are informing the Vatican that the sole God given right to the land of Israel is to the Nation of Israel. If His Honor the Pope, and the Vatican, do not apologize within two weeks of receiving this letter, and if he does not change his ways, we shall judge these actions in the Court of Mount Zion, in a court of 71 Jewish elders of Zion, and enact the prophecy of ‘The liberators will rise up upon Mount Zion, to judge the Mountain of Esau and the kingdom shall be God’s’ (Obadiah 1:21). The court shall judge the Vatican in its presence or in absentia, and it is possible that the Vatican will be found guilty of anti-Semitism, as has been known to be done several times throughout history, and to place responsibility upon the Vatican for all of the outcomes of its actions.”

(Read more from “Pope Francis to Be Tried by Sanhedrin” HERE)

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Is This the Start to the Fall of Apple?

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Apple Inc shares slumped nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading as its fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of estimates and it missed some targets for iPhone sales . . .

Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in an interview the results in China were “spectacular” during the quarter and noted plans to open 40 stores there over the next 12 months.

Without disclosing specific figures, Maestri said sales of the Apple Watch beat the company’s expectations. He noted that in the nine weeks since its launch in late April, the device has sold better than either iPhones or iPads over a similar period after their launch.

Apple said on Tuesday it sold 47.5 million iPhones in the third quarter, up 35 percent from a year ago. But some analysts had expected around 49 million.

Colin Gillis, an analyst for BGC Partners, said the results highlighted the vulnerability of Apple’s dependence on the iPhone and the Chinese market’s growing importance to the company. (Read more from “Is This the Start to the Fall of Apple?” HERE)

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Try to Visit This Manhattan-Sized Island and You May Not Leave Alive

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Sometimes paradise is better off lost: Off the coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, a Manhattan-size island called North Sentinel Island boasts a deep green canopy of trees, stretches of sandy beaches, coral reef barriers—and a population that’s decidedly hostile to outsiders, who aren’t likely to live long.

As Wackulus explains, the isolated indigenous tribe, one of the last of its kind on Earth, almost always attacks visitors. A little digging uncovered this story: After a night of drinking in 2006, two fishermen drifted too close to the island and were killed by the Sentinelese, who’ve lived there for 60,000 years.

A helicopter sent to recover their bodies was halted by tribesmen’s arrows, the Telegraph reported at the time; the air generated by the copter’s rotors revealed their bodies in shallow graves.

One of the earliest known encounters a century earlier ended when a convict who’d escaped from the neighboring Andaman Islands ended up on the island with his throat slit, the New York Times reported in 2012.

In 1967, the Sentinelese—a Stone Age people but for the metal-tipped arrows carved from wrecked ships—hid from an Indian government expedition, during which a marker was placed on the island, declaring it part of India. (Read more from “Try to Visit This Manhattan-Sized Island and You May Not Leave Alive” HERE)

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Techies Are Hiring This Wiccan Witch to Protect Their Computers From Viruses and Offices From Evil Spirits [+video]

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Many people have had their computer or smartphone possessed by an evil demon — or at least that’s what it can feel like when some mysterious bug keeps causing an app to crash, or your phone keeps shutting off for no reason.

But if you truly think your electronics have been invaded by an evil spirit, there’s someone who will take your call — Reverend Joey Talley — a Wiccan witch from the San Francisco Bay Area who claims to solve supernatural issues for techies.

The Bay Area has always had a freewheeling spirit, which is part of the reason the tech industry found such a firm foothold there. And tech people are often experimental by nature, gravitating toward promises of an improved life through trial-and-error. This has led to some interesting crossover in San Francisco, with certain tech big shots from companies like Salesforce, Facebook, and Apple seeking out mystic help for conventional problems, SF Weekly reports.

Talley is one of those mystics, a Marin County witch boasting three master’s degrees and over 40 years of experience. Though tech problems are not the only ones Talley tackles, she is routinely called upon to debug people’s tech woes with spiritual energy.

“Most people want me to protect their computers from viruses and hacks,” she told SF Weekly. “So I’ll make charms for them. I like to use flora.” And when there are problems in office hardware, Talley turns to “Jet,” a black stone that serves to block energy. In extreme cases, she casts protection spells of her own over the entire company. (Read more from “Techies Are Hiring This Wiccan Witch to Protect Their Computers From Viruses and Offices From Evil Spirits” HERE)

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‘Artificial Intelligence Is as Dangerous as NUCLEAR WEAPONS’: AI Pioneer Warns Smart Computers Could Doom Mankind

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Artificial intelligence has the potential to be as dangerous to mankind as nuclear weapons, a leading pioneer of the technology has claimed.

Professor Stuart Russell, a computer scientist who has led research on artificial intelligence, fears humanity might be ‘driving off a cliff’ with the rapid development of AI.

He fears the technology could too easily be exploited for use by the military in weapons, putting them under the control of AI systems.

He points towards the rapid development in AI capabilities by companies such as Boston Dynamics, which was recently acquired by Google, to develop autonomous robots for use by the military.

Professor Russell, who is a researcher at the University of California in Berkeley and the Centre for the study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, compared the development of AI to the work that was done to develop nuclear weapons. (Read more from “‘Artificial Intelligence Is as Dangerous as NUCLEAR WEAPONS’: AI Pioneer Warns Smart Computers Could Doom Mankind” HERE)

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You May Not Want to Use Hand Sanitizer If You Are a Man, Here’s Why

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Hand sanitizer causes the skin to absorb 100 times more of the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA), according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri and published in the journal PLOS ONE.

BPA exposure [also] came from handling receipts printed on thermal paper, the kind typically issued by cash registers.

“Our research found that large amounts of BPA can be transferred to your hands and then to the food you hold and eat as well as be absorbed through your skin,” lead author Frederick vom Saal said.

Research had previously shown that hand sanitizers cause the skin to absorb higher levels of chemicals, but this had not previously been demonstrated with BPA . . .

“BPA exhibits hormone-like properties and has been proven to cause reproductive defects in fetuses, infants, children and adults as well as cancer, metabolic and immune problems in rodents,” vom Saal said. “BPA from thermal papers will be absorbed into your blood rapidly; at those levels, many diseases such as diabetes and disorders such as obesity increase as well.” (Read more from “You May Not Want to Use Hand Sanitizer If You Are a Man, Here’s Why” HERE)

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