If we humans want to slow down global warming due to carbon emissions, clean energy is the way. But, as with all things, there are cons to go along with those pros. New research reports that installing large-scale wind farms across the country could raise the temperature of the continental United States.
The study, published in the journal Joule, is based on mathematical modeling done by experts at Harvard University. First, the team created a climate baseline; they used a standard weathe
Aerial view of vehicles lining up to cross to the United States at San Ysidro Port of Entry as seen from Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on August 10, 2018.
A top Homeland Security Investigations official has told a federal court that it remains the agency’s policy that officers can install a GPS tracking device on cars entering the United States “without a warrant or individualized suspicion” for up to 48 hours.
There is no such time limit, HSI Assistant Director Matthew C. Allen also told the court, for putting such trackers on “airplane, commercial vehicles, and semi-tractor trailers, which has a significantly reduced expectation of privacy in the location of their vehicles.”
Such an assertion comes over a month after a federal judge recently told the Department of Justice that such a practice—at least in one drug-trafficking case—is unconstitutional. His decision is based on a landmark 2012 Supreme Court ruling involving GPS tracking, known as Jones.
Prosecutors had claimed that installing such a tracker was valid under the “border doctrine” exception to the Fourth Amendment, which finds that limited, warrantless searches at the border are allowed. US District Judge Jesus G. Bernal disagreed in an August 24, 2018 ruling.
Allen continued, saying that HSI believes that its policy is “consistent” with both the Jones decision and a case from 2004 case known as Flores-Montano. In that instance, the Supreme Court ruled that there is a “diminished” expectation of privacy at the border.
Legal experts find this newly disclosed HSI policy to be troubling.
“It is hard to square with the [Supreme] Court’s decision in Jones,” wrote Michael Price, an attorney with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in an email to Ars.
“For starters, it ignores the fact that physical trespass was the basis for the Supreme Court’s holding in Jones—the act of placing a tracker on a vehicle is itself a search, regardless of how long police track it.”
Similarly, law professor Brian Owsley of the University of North Texas, who formerly served as a federal magistrate judge along the border in southern Texas, agreed in an email to Ars:
If HSI wants to argue that it can engage in warrantless GPS tracking of vehicles, that is within its prerogatives… However, Jones does not support a 48-hour window within the border. Instead, Jones establishes that the government needs a warrant signed by a neutral magistrate judge based on probable cause consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, Congress has established that a warrant is necessary for the installation of a mobile tracking device, which included GPS devices. In 18 U.S.C. 3117, Congress does not discuss any exception for border searches. Indeed, once a device is put on a vehicle, it likely will leave the border area, which undercuts the government’s position.
“Law enforcement sensitive”
HSI Assistant Director Allen’s statement was made in a September 28 court filing in a case known as United States v. Slavco Ignjatov et al., which is currently winding down in federal court in Riverside, California.
The government said in a separate September 28 filing that it would soon ask the court to dismiss the charges in the wake of Judge Bernal’s August 24 ruling, which suppressed evidence found as a result of the illegal search—the installation of two such tracking devices.
As part of the investigation into Ignjatov, an FBI agent, after consulting with two HSI agents, ordered that a pair of GPS trackers be installed on a big-rig truck as it approached a border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan. Authorities believed that this truck and its occupants were involved in smuggling cocaine.
Prosecutors said that investigators tracked the truck from Michigan as it drove 33 hours to Los Angeles, where local police confronted the driver and his passenger. In addition to transporting its bona fide cargo of frozen cheese danishes, the truck was found to contain 15 four-pound packages of sugar.
The government believes that these sacks of sugar were effectively a “dry run” for a future delivery of cocaine, particularly as the very same truck had been caught delivering nearly 200 kilograms of cocaine in 2017.
Lawyers for defendants Slavco Ignjatov and Valentino Hristovski filed a motion to suppress, which was successful. When the government chose not to appeal the ruling, the judge eventually ordered that the men be released so that they could return home to Canada.
On Thursday, Ars asked HSI to provide a copy of its GPS-at-the-border policy and any related legal memos.
“Because the policy you are asking about is deemed law enforcement sensitive, you will need to file a FOIA request for the policy,” Lauren Mack, an agency spokeswoman, emailed Ars.
Ars has already filed a records request under FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. This process can take months to years.
Government lawyers have asked Judge Bernal to amend his August 24 order simply to include that the FBI agent and Los Angeles Police Department officer involved in the arrest should not be reprimanded for what turned out to be bad legal advice.
On Friday, Steven Gruel and Marilyn Bednarski, attorneys for the defendants, filed a motion to the court, arguing against the government’s position.
“If the federal government does in fact have such a policy and is training law enforcement agents to act as the policy suggests, which is a violation of the 4th amendment, the government should be deterred and the agencies’ internal policies and training should be revealed and scrutinized,” they wrote.
The two sides will be back in court on November 5 at 2pm to discuss the matter.
Former South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak was sentenced on Friday for bribery and embezzlement. He had been convicted of taking $5.4 million in bribes from Samsung during his campaign and presidency.
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Former South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak was sentenced on Friday for bribery and embezzlement. He had been convicted of taking $5.4 million in bribes from Samsung during his campaign and presidency.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
South Korea’s former president, Lee Myung-bak, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for bribery and embezzlement. He will also have to pay $11.5 million in fines.
Lee is the second South Korean leader convicted this year on charges of corruption, and the fourth president to be arrested for corruption since the 1990s. Prior to entering politics, Lee had been an executive at Hyundai, and campaigned on a promise to help South Korea’s economy grow.
Lee served as president of South Korea from 2008 until 2013. A court ruled Friday that before and during his presidency Lee Myung-bak accepted $5.4 million in bribes from Samsung, South Korea’s largest conglomerate.
In exchange, Lee granted a presidential pardon to Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s chairman, who had been convicted of embezzlement and tax evasion. The conviction had forced Lee Kun-hee to resign from Samsung in 2008; he returned to work at the company shortly after receiving the presidential pardon.
The court also found that former president Lee disguised his ownership of a lucrative auto-part maker under the names of his relatives, and embezzled 24 billion Korean won from the company, according to The New York Times. Samsung later offered to pay legal fees for a court case involving the auto parts company.
Lee did not appear in court on Friday, and has previously denied the charges. “During the hearings, he shifted the blame to his aides, accusing them of committing the crimes for their own profit and conspiring against him,” Judge Chung said on Friday, according to the Times.
South Korea became a democracy in the 1980s, but corruption continues to taint elected leaders’ ties to business leaders.
In 2013, Lee was succeeded as president of South Korea by Park Geun-Hye, who was impeached and ousted on charges of corruption and abuse of power. Park was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for those crimes. In February, an appeals court convicted the son of Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee of bribing Park.
Two other former South Korean presidents, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, were convicted of corruption and separate offenses in 1997; they were both later pardoned.
South Korea’s current president, Moon Jae-In, has promised to root out corruption in the government. He won an election to replace Park in May of last year.
Before it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn on its final death dive, the Cassini spacecraft made 22 orbits of the planet that followed a path no probe had taken before: It flew between the massive planet and its rings. During those final orbits, Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) spotted water ice and complex organic molecules flowing from the rings to the atmosphere of the planet: ring rain. But it turns out, “ring rain is more like a ring downpour,” according to Hunter
The European Parliament has voted to approve new regulations that will place a European content quota on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Once the new rules are formally approved, 30 percent of video-on-demand platform content catalogs will have to be European — a move aimed at supporting “the cultural diversity of the European audiovisual sector.” Additionally, these companies will be asked to support the development of European productions either through direct investment or by paying into national funds, contributions that should be “proportional to their on-demand revenues in that country.”
While some companies, like Netflix, are already nearing that quota, they’ll be required to maintain it going forward. Last month, Roberto Viola, head of the European Commission’s communications networks, content and technology division, told Variety that the European Union would publish information on how streaming platforms currently stand in regards to their European content. The figures are expected this month.
The new regulations still need to be approved by the Council of EU ministers. Afterwards, EU member states will have 21 months to incorporate the rules into their own legislation.
In a moment where you need to quickly book a ride, but don’t want to fidget with ride-sharing apps or would like to see a comparison of fares? Google Assistant can now help in an easier way. Just say to your phone or Google Home, “Hey Google, book me a ride to the airport.”
Once you do that, your phone will pop-up a list of available options including price and how far away the next driver may be. Depending on market, it should bring up both taxis and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. Tapping on an option will take you right into Uber or Lyft to show you pricing and exact wait times for drivers.
You’ll still need access to apps, if you go with a ride-sharing service, but the quick comparison is handy.
Google says that this new ride requesting in Google Assistant is available in English and “any country where one of our supported ride service partners operate.” In the coming months, they’ll expand to more languages.
Two weeks ago, Hurricane Florence slammed into the Carolinas, unleashing six months of rain in a matter of hours. In inland Cumberland County, the Cape Fear River rose 40 inches, inundating Fayetteville with the worst flooding the city has seen since 1945. But as the waters receded and citizens returned to their ruined homes, a new plague was just beginning to descend.
Drive through Fayetteville today and you’ll pass house after house emptied of belongings, the mud-stained detritus piled high on curbs across the county. But you’ll have a hard time seeing the storm’s aftermath through the clouds of monstrous, hyper-aggressive mosquitoes spattering across your windshield. Twenty-seven counties in North Carolina, including Cumberland, are in the midst of a mega-mosquito outbreak. On September 26, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper ordered $4 million in relief funds to combat invading swarms of the nickel-sized bloodsuckers, known to scientists as Psorophora ciliata and to everyone else as gallinippers.
“They’re just everywhere,” says Tom Turturro, an environmental health program specialist with Cumberland County. The area gets a small amount of gallinipper activity each year during the rainy season, but this has been an especially bad bout. His office has gotten more than 500 calls in the last week. Worried it will hamper clean-up efforts, the county sent out pesticide-spraying trucks this week, and is looking into aerial efforts as well. While not known to transmit human disease, the super-sized skeeters are quick to mob any mammal they can find, any time, day or night, and deliver a fearsome bite. “It’s like somebody shoving a hot poker in your arm,” says Turturro. “It burns like hell.”
All mosquitoes come equipped with serrated mouthparts called maxillae they use to carve through skin. For most species, these structures are so small and sharp that you don’t feel much more than a tingle to let you know you’ve been bitten. But the gallinipper’s chompers are designed for bigger prey—it’s one of the only species that can pierce cattle hide. Its bite is so deep it sets off nerve cells in the epidermis designed to alert the body to a serious wound. In other words, your body thinks it’s being stabbed.
“It’s a much more intense pain because if that part of our skin has been compromised, that means the body is in big trouble,” says Deby Cassill, a biologist at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
While the giant mosquito can usually be found in low numbers throughout the southeastern US, Cassil says the animal is native to the swamplands of the Mississippi delta. Pressure from pesticides and human development in more populous parts of the region have caused other mosquito species to become smaller and reproduce faster—sometimes up to multiple generations in a year. But Psorophora ciliata has a different strategy. The massive females overproduce eggs, laying them in the millions in low-lying grasslands. Most will dry up and die over the next year or two. But should a big rain roll through, any viable eggs will quickly hatch. “They’re adapted to these rare events where they can really benefit,” says Cassill. “It’s kind of like a dinosaur in that way.”
So what happens as these rare flooding events, like Florence, increase in frequency?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that the science isn’t clear on whether a warming planet will deliver more hurricanes, only that any hurricanes that do happen will be worse. More moisture in the atmosphere and warmer seas mean more rain and more storms like Florence and Harvey, which park for days over the coast.
“It’s a great question, and a really hard one for scientists to predict,” says Michael Reiskind, a public health entomologist at North Carolina State University. “But I have to think that if every single year we had a major flooding event like Florence, populations of these mosquitoes would go up.” More frequent flooding would mean lower egg mortality year to year—the thing that, for the moment, is keeping giant mosquitoes from being an annual scourge.
Humans have worked hard over the centuries to minimize the flooding that was a natural part of the coastal ecosystem—draining swamps and rerouting rivers, installing dams and levies to protect growing cities. But all those measures weren’t designed to withstand the new extreme weather events of a climate-changed world. Often, it actually makes matters worse.
Super-fueled hurricane seasons threaten to bring recurring floods to the American South in the near future. And with them, a six-legged pestilence. “Wherever in our country gets warmer and wetter, the insects are going to come,” Cassill says. The resulting impacts could be more than just a few bad bug bites. Recently, researchers estimated that for every degree Celsius of warming, 10 to 25 percent of the world’s crops will be lost to insects. And that’s a scourge that will require more than some DEET and well-screened windows to ward off.
