| Top Story |
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| Taiwan-US Announce Aggressive Path to Major Trade Deal |
| Taiwan looks to get a trade deal with the United States after the Biden administration left the nation out of a an economic deal with 13 other Asian countries. |
| US, Taiwan to launch trade talks after Joe Biden excludes island from Indo-Pacific group |
| From timesofindia.indiatimes.com |
| Speaking in Taipei, Deng said they hoped there would be an opportunity soon to seal a free trade deal Taiwan has long sought with the United States, adding the island was also still striving to participate in the IPEF. |
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| Top Headlines |
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| Xi Cements Ties to Zambia in Call with President |
| Chairman Xi was in a phone conversation with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema in which he declared that the two countries are tied together forever, through good and bad weather, and each should serve the core interest of the other as outlined by the CCP. |
| China ready to push ties with Zambia to higher levels, broader areas: Xi |
| From eng.chinamil.com.cn |
| He also called for strengthening strategic communication and policy synergy, fully implementing the nine programs announced by China at the 8th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation(FOCAC) in 2021, deepening mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields, pushing for more Zambian goods, especially quality agricultural products, to enter the Chinese market, and strengthening anti-epidemic cooperation. |
| Xi called on both sides to carry forward the Tanzania-Zambia Railway spirit, keep it updated in accordance with the trend of the times, and make the railway an important transportation channel in the region, Xi noted. |
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| Instant 3D-Printing Thanks to Lights and Resin Printing |
| A new type of 3D printing is being developed at Switzerland’s École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) that can use light and volumes of resin to instantly print objects, as opposed to having to add layer upon layer in the much more-time consuming method of most 3D-printers, additive printing. |
| New Resin Printing Method Creates Objects In Seconds |
| From hackaday.com |
| The method works similarly to existing resin printers by shining a specific light pattern on the resin in order to harden it. The main difference is that the resin is initially placed in a cylinder and spun at a high speed, and the light is shined on the resin at different angles with very precise intensities and timings in order to harden the resin in specific areas. This high-speed method allows the printer to produce prints in record-breaking time. The only current downside, besides the high price for the prototype printer, is that it’s currently limited to small prints. |
| With the ability to scale in the future and the trend of most new technologies to come down in price after they have been on the market for some amount of time, it would be groundbreaking to be able to produce prints with this type of speed if printers like these can be scalable. Especially if they end up matching the size and scale of homemade printers like this resin printer. |
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| Superbugs Could be Killed with Light-Triggered Nano Drills |
| Rice University is developing nanoscale drills that are triggered by visible light. The nanoscale drills are being developed, in part, to kill bacteria, with treatments of real infections showing nano machines are effective. As bacteria grows more resistance to treatment, new, innovative alternatives are becoming essential to keep up. |
| Visible light triggers molecular machines to treat infections — ScienceDaily |
| From www.sciencedaily.com |
| “I tell students that when they are my age, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are going to make COVID look like a walk in the park,” Tour said. “Antibiotics won’t be able to keep 10 million people a year from dying of bacterial infections. But this really stops them.” |
| The breakthrough study led by Tour and Rice alumni Ana Santos and Dongdong Liu appears in Science Advances. |
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| Headlines |
| Hunter and Uncle Dealt with CCP for Business, Emails Show |
| The Hunter Biden emails are revealing more ties with the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Biden family. Hunter and Uncle James were part of an ongoing multimillion dollar business negotiating deal via email after Joe left office in 2012. |
| Hunter Biden saga: Washington Post cites emails from laptop on business ties with uncle James Biden |
| From www.foxnews.com |
| “James and Hunter Biden were in the midst of a lucrative deal with Chinese executives at the time, while Joe Biden was out of public service for the first time in nearly a half-century, having left the vice presidency a few months earlier,” the Post wrote on Tuesday. |
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| Christian Ordered Not to be Around Non-Chrisitans by American University |
| Southern Illinois University ordered an order to a graduate students not to contact students that might be offended by her beliefs. The University called it a no-contact order. The student, Maggie Dejong, is a Christian conservative. The student is suing the school with attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom serving pro bono. |
| Maggie DeJong sues Southern Illinois University over “no-contact” orders after Christian, conservati |
| From www.washingtontimes.com |
| Maggie DeJong “suffered sleeplessness, anxiety, chest pains, feelings of sadness, loss of appetite, weight loss, lack of concentration, harm to her reputation, and future loss of employment and wages” because of the orders involving the art therapy counseling major, her lawyers said. |
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| Nigeria’s Ex VP Runs for President Again, Against Yoruba Protests |
| A major political party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has nominated former Vice President Atihu Abukakr for the 2023 Presidential election. Though Muslim himself, his selection has led protests from a Yuruba Muslim group. The oft-losing Presidential candidate has called for Nigerian unity over tribal and religious divides. |
| PDP Presents Certificate Of Return To Atiku As Yoruba Muslim Group Threatens Showdown Over Presidential Ticket |
| From thewillnigeria.com |
| THEWILL reports that the Muslim scholars in the South-West in its reaction to the emergence of Atiku as presidential candidate of the PDP, on Wednesday, insisted on a Muslim of Yoruba extraction as the next president or Vice-President of Nigeria in 2023. |
| Ibe, who faulted the position of the group, said, “This is unfortunate that a religious group will veer off tandem into the political arena. However, the future that His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, envisages for Nigeria is one country of one people with one future in which every tribe, tongue and faith will stand united. Above all, it is incumbent on religious and community leaders to preach peace rather than division. |
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| Amazon Using Threats to Stop Union Vote, Group Alleges |
| The workers at the Amazon Staten Island site were successful in voting for a union, but now the union is accusing Amazon of using intimidation and fear tactics to try to stop workers from voting for a union. Accusations include threats to reduce salaries should the union vote win. |
| Amazon accused of threatening workers during union vote |
| From www.protocol.com |
| “Our focus remains on working directly with our team to make Amazon a great place to work. The allegations in NLRB complaint are without merit, and we look forward to showing that through this process,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, wrote in an email to Protocol. |
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| Wires |
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| WHO Ramps Up Pandemic Epidemics |
| Outbreaks of diseases like monkeypox becoming more frequent, WHO warns – National |
| From globalnews.ca |
| “Unfortunately, that ability to amplify that disease and move it on within our communities is increasing – so both disease emergence and disease amplification factors have increased.” |
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| Ron and the Florida Legislature Singing the Same Son |
| How the Florida Legislature is making Ron DeSantis into a GOP juggernaut |
| From www.nbcnews.com |
| “We’re already going full-throttle and we’re not slowing down,” Republican state Rep. Randy Fine, a top DeSantis ally, told NBC News, predicting lawmakers will expand school choice vouchers and gun rights when the Legislature meets next year. DeSantis might take more control over higher education, too. |
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| BIden’s Wage Controls Might Explode Inflation |
| Biden Pushes Expanded Wage Mandates That Exacerbate Inflation, Make Infrastructure More Expensive For Taxpayers |
| From www.forbes.com |
| “When mandated by government agencies, PLAs can interfere with existing union collective bargaining agreements and needlessly discourage competition from quality nonunion contractors and their employees who comprise 87.4% of the private U.S. construction industry workforce according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,” the 16 governors noted in their letter. “Reducing competition from some of the best union and nonunion construction firms and workers will exacerbate the construction industry’s skilled labor shortage, delay projects, and increase construction costs by estimates of 12% to 20% per project, which will result in fewer infrastructure improvements, less construction industry job creation, and higher taxes.” |
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| Breaking the Exascale Barrier Could Mean Having a Scientist in Your Pocket |
| The world’s fastest supercomputer just broke the exascale barrier |
| From www.sciencenews.org |
| Exascale computing is expected to allow for new advances in a variety of scientific fields that depend on vastly complex calculations. The exascale milestone “represents an unprecedented capability for researchers around the world to use the computer to ask their specific scientific questions,” says Frontier’s project director Justin Whitt of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. |
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| Select Feed |
| Parts of Ukraine Could Vote to Join Russia in Summer – Lawmaker |
| From www.themoscowtimes.com |
| Ukraine has accused Moscow of plotting to stage sham independence referendums in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. |
| “I don’t rule out that this may happen as early as July,” said Leonid Slutsky, the head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior member of Moscow’s team of negotiators with Ukraine. |
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| Statement by President Joe Biden on the 101st Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre |
| From www.whitehouse.gov |
| I went to Greenwood—the first President to visit since the massacre—to help fill the silence. Because in silence, wounds deepen. In Greenwood, I called on all of us to reflect on the deep roots of domestic terrorism and hate in our nation and to recommit to combating systemic racism across our country and institutions. As part of that work, I announced two expanded efforts to help communities like Greenwood build wealth—an aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing, and a bold commitment to increase the share of federal contracts going to small disadvantaged businesses, including Black- and brown-owned small businesses, by 50 percent by 2025. |
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| Christian |
| Kidnappings: Igbo traders leaving Bayelsa – Traders’ Union lament |
| From dailytrust.com |
| Onyegesi said, “What is happening is bad, as we are talking, most of our prominent business people are leaving Bayelsa because of reoccurrence incident of kidnapping, that is why we call on the government to act now to contain the menace of kidnapping because if they don’t do something about it, it will affect the economy of the state….” |
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| Pastors dabble in brewing and mining to survive Zimbabwe’s burning economy – Baptist News Global |
| From baptistnews.com |
| As for Pastor Fengu the Baptist minister, profiting from mining doesn’t dent his passion for the ministry. “Each Sunday when I wear my dog collar, my side gig as an artisanal gold miner doesn’t diminish my standing as a pastor in any way.” |
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| Ohio’s Steve Dettelbach gains more endorsements for ATF bid |
| From www.cleveland.com |
| A group of faith leaders, including rabbis at The Park Synagogue in Pepper Pike, OH and the Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, wrote a letter urging his “speedy confirmation” to help fight” an alarming level of anti-religious violence. It cited his prosecution of a white supremacist who sought to burn down a predominantly African American church in Conneaut, Ohio and his work forming “United Against Hate, a diverse group of religious leaders to condemn such violence.” |
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| Sci Tech |
| Automated drones could scare birds off agricultural fields — ScienceDaily |
| From www.sciencedaily.com |
| “Growers don’t really have a good tool they can rely on for deterring pest birds at an affordable price,” said Manoj Karkee, associate professor in WSU’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering and the study’s corresponding author. “With further refinement and industry partnerships, this system could work.” |
| “Birds are really clever,” said Karkee, who is also affiliated with WSU’s Center for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems. “They often find ways around deterrents. We don’t want a system that only lasts for a few months or years before they stop being scared off.” |
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| Spanish Cave Has Been Used For Art And Burials For Over 50,000 Years, According To New Research |
| From www.forbes.com |
| New evidence suggests that a cave in the South of Spain has been regularly visited by prehistoric people for at least 50,000 years. The first visitors to the cave were likely Neaderthals, about 65,000 years ago. After that, modern humans used the cave at different points in time to create art and carry out ceremonial tasks. |
| Raw Feed |
| NATO, US say Ukraine war likely to end through talks | Russia-Ukraine war News |
| From www.aljazeera.com |
| “Wars are unpredictable,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “We were able to predict the invasion, but how this war will evolve, it’s very hard to predict. What we do know is that almost all wars end at some stage at the negotiating table.” |
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| Musk to Tesla employees: Return to office or get out | Business and Economy News |
| From www.aljazeera.com |
| “The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Musk wrote. “That is why I lived in the factory so much — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.” |
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| Israel and UAE Struck Historic Free Trade Deal. Here’s Why |
| From time.com |
| Israel and the United Arab Emirates deepened ties on Tuesday with a historic free trade agreement—the first of its kind between Israel and an Arab country—at a time of growing criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians |
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| Natural Gas Watch |
| Russia cutting off natural gas to Denmark, company says |
| From japantoday.com |
| “We stand firm in our refusal to pay in rubles, and we’ve been preparing for this scenario,” Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper said. ”The situation underpins the need of the EU becoming independent of Russian gas by accelerating the build-out of renewable energy.” |
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| European Gas Falls as Russia Expects No Further Supply Cuts – Bloomberg |
| From www.bloomberg.com |
| European natural gas prices declined, with Russia unlikely to cut flows to additional buyers after a dispute over payment terms demanded by Moscow. |
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| Iran gas cuts due to nonpayment will cause shortages |
| From www.manisteenews.com |
| “The Iranian side has demanded payment of the financial obligations for the gas fees from the Iraqi side,” the statement said. Iraq has been unable to make payments totaling about $1.7 billion because of the failure of political elites to form a government eight months after national elections. The caretaker Cabinet that’s in place does not have the authority to make the payments. |
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| Ukraine has ‘promised’ not to target inside Russia with US’ donated long-range weapons |
| From www.news24.com |
| “The Ukrainians have given us assurances that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory,” Blinken told a joint news conference with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. |
| “There is a strong trust bond between Ukraine and the United States, as well as with our allies and partners,” he said. |
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| China Watch |
| Military health service troops leave Shanghai after completing epidemic prevention tasks |
| From eng.chinamil.com.cn |
| China’s military health service troops have completed the mission of pandemic prevention and control in Shanghai recently and started to pull back from the city successively. |
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| Chinese peacekeeping medical contingent to Mali treats foreign wounded soldiers |
| From eng.chinamil.com.cn |
| “Our soldiers have received good treatment at Chinese level-II hospital . The Chinese people and Egyptian people have enjoyed friendly cooperation. We are very grateful to them,” said the commanding officer of the Egyptian peacekeeping troops , when visiting the injured at the hospital. |
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| China’s new configuration AG600 large amphibious aircraft makes maiden flight |
| From eng.chinamil.com.cn |
| This new-configuration AG600 amphibious aircraft took off from the Zhuhai Jinwan Airport in south China’s Guangdong Province at 10:55 a.m., and then safely landed at the airport after a 20-minute flight, said the AVIC, the country’s leading plane-maker. |
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| Sci-Tech Watch |
| Netflix’s crackdown on password-sharing in Latin American countries is proving to be a disaster.- Technology News, Firstpost |
| From www.firstpost.com |
| With the new rules being haphazardly implemented and poor programming which makes the additional fees seem less and less valuable, many subscribers have given up their Netflix subscriptions altogether. |
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| ‘Is this real?’: shock and indifference over metaverse sexual assault |
| From metro.co.uk |
| Last week, SumOfUs published a report titled ‘Metaverse: another cesspool of toxic content’ which contains details of the researcher’s violent encounter in Meta’s Horizon World. |
| Link to Report |
| Some were appalled at the experience, while others suggested she should just turn the system off. |
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| Amazon just blocked ALL Android users from purchasing Kindle ebooks, and this is why |
| From www.express.co.uk |
| The major change came into force today (June 1), with billing options not only removed from the Amazon Kindle app but also from the Music and Audible apps. This big feature removal comes in response to changes to the Google Play Store billing policy. |
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| Scientists discover world’s largest plant that’s 4,500 years old |
| From metro.co.uk |
| Researchers have located the largest plant in the world that’s roughly as long as the distance between London and Bath. |
| Th plant is an ancient and incredibly resilient seagrass stretching across 180km and is estimated to be at least 4,500 years old. |
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| Unity CEO John Riccitiello: The metaverse will have millions of destinations |
| From venturebeat.com |
| He said he defines the metaverse as the next generation of the internet that is always real time, mostly 3D, mostly interactive, mostly social, and mostly persistent. He hedged a lot by putting all those “mostlys” in there but it seems like a reasonable definition and one that could very much benefit Unity, the maker of the most popular engine for making games. |
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| Megalodon and great white sharks competed for food |
| From cosmosmagazine.com |
| Researchers have found that the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) and great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) likely shared a similar position in the food chain (at the top!), and both species appeared to enjoy similar foods, including cetaceans (marine mammals) such as whales, dolphins and porpoises. |
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