An American Journalist detained in Russia with Espionage charge

Posted on March 30, 2023 by Leslie Park

One of the Wall Street Journal reporters, Evan Gershkovich (31), a Russian speaker was detained while he was traveling for his reporting work in the city of Yekaterinburg, around 800 miles east of Moscow on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. He was accused of espionage against Russia. According to WSJ, It is “a first case of an American journalist detained for allegations of spying since the Cold War.”

He worked in Russia since 2017 as a reporter from Agence France Presse and The Mosco Times before he started at the WSJ in 2022. His parents immigrated from the former Soviet Union to the U.S. in 1979 and He was born in NYC, according to Wikipedia.

President Biden was briefed on the detention of Mr. Gershkovich and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. according to WSJ, Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre reassured the public and said “We’ve been very clear about Americans not going to Russia. It is not safe,”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. seeks immediate consular access to Mr. Gershkovich so that it can provide the appropriate support. “In the strongest possible terms, we condemn the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices,” Mr. Blinken said.

According to NPR, Mr. Gershkovich entered a restaurant in Yekaterinburg, and two hours later his phone was off. When he was arrested he was digging into Wagner’s mercenary army. Wagner’s mercenary army consisted of all criminal inmates on the front line of the war in Ukraine for their freedom.

“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”

According to NPR, A court for Gershkovich’s trial will be in a closed session and he will be detained until the investigations are done at the end of May.

Similarly, just a few days ago, the US also arrested a suspected Russian spy over trying to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in the US by the name of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov was charged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for acting as an illegal agent of a Russian intelligence service gathering information on the Ukraine war.

People are moving into the Least tax states or No income tax states

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Leslie Park

As the pandemic winds down, and the social and demographic changes become more obvious, people are moving from big cities to rural communities. Of course, money is the main reason to move out. People are spending less as inflation continues to wipe out value, and the economic climate continues to be unstable.

A side effect of this is that many Americans are abandoning some of the higher-tax states for lower or no-tax states.

In healthy financial life, there are many rules to apply to different lifestyles, although, the 50-30-20 rule is the most popular; 50% of monthly income for essential needs, 30% of monthly income for non-essential needs, and 20% are for paying credit cards/saving.

From this perspective, consumers should spend 50% of their incomes on housing, cars, and taxes within the budget. if the tax is high, then their essential needs would be higher, and taxpayers become unhappier, not because of more work to make it up but because they’d also have no time to enjoy their lives as well.

For example, States with no income tax are Washington State, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, and Florida. For retirees, States with no sales tax are Delaware, New Hampshire, and Oregon. Property tax-wise, the least tax state is Louisiana that $532 per $100,000.

In the first quarter of the year 2023, the mortgage rate is 6.61% in 30-year fixed, according to mortgage news daily.com. However, some areas of the U.S. are still in a seller market, and it is usually these states with lower taxes.

The demographic map of America is changing, and the political atmosphere will likely impact this change in some time.

Serial’s Adnan Syed’s Conviction Reinstated

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Leslie Park

A few years back, the “Serial” podcast looked into the case of Adnan Syed, the individual convicted of the murder of Hae Min Lee, who was once his ex-girlfriend.

The conviction had been vacated and Syed freed; however, in a 2-1 decision, the Maryland appellate court ordered a do-over of the hearing which vacated Syed’s conviction because the circuit court judge had violated the rights of the Young Lee, the brother of the victim. He was not given adequate chance to attend the hearing.

Syed’s attorney has stated that she planned to appeal the decision to the Maryland Supreme Court as the overturning of the decision had to do with procedural matters of notice and mootness rather than Adnan Syed’s guilt or innocence.

Adnan Syed’s situation remains unclear, although Syed’s team is fighting to keep him out of confinement while the next steps are being figured out.

[Opinion] Palm Reading leads more job cutting in Tech Companies?

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Leslie Park

AIs are replacing human jobs and workloads in some workplaces. Now, Amazon sells business software and its service to the U.S. cafe chain Panera Bread, and consumers’ eyes are wide open. This new software allows people to pay by opening their palms in front of the scanner at the cash register. According to Yahoo.com, Amazon started to sell such business software in June 2022 and has provided for more than 69 locations in U.S. and UK.

Amazon One device is a scanning system for regular customers that let customers scan their plans to pay, with two locations in greater St. Louis. Kumar said the deployment would expand to 10-20 Panera cafes in the coming months. Vice President Dilip Kumar from Amazon said the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant is widening the deployment of its contactless technology with existing customers, in an interview with Reuters.

“More than 50 of the installations were with the likes of independent retailers, stadiums, and university customers, and the rest were in Whole Foods and other Amazon stores,” he added.

AI and automation are seemingly threatening when it comes to people and their ability to retain and keep their jobs. Since November 2022, Amazon has cut jobs by a total of 27,000. Tech companies are cutting jobs like relay races now a day.

Due to the harsh economic climate, many businesses are liquidating their inventories and selling off their businesses or just closing. Meta cut 10,000 jobs in 2023, Google cut 12,000 in January, and Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees in January 2023.

Chat GPT or Bard, Fight for the top AI

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Leslie Park

Chatbots are becoming the next search engine. People have become familiar with using the tool, bragging that Chat GPT helped them with homework or pass examinations and dissertations. This has been an ongoing thing since the early 20th century and finally coming to fruition for tech moguls and investors.

Since November 30, 2022, more than a million people have jumped into the new and more developed chatbot, ChatGPT.

According to CBC.CAnews, ChatGPT by OpenAI is available as a “research preview” to the public for now. It allows users to enter questions or tasks into a textbox — whether it’s asking it to write a poem, song lyrics, or computer code — and it’ll output copy or code that’s passable as a human.

“I think it’ll be a slow process, but I do think a lot of people are going to be interested in creativity or creative work product that is written by AI as opposed to humans,” said Maura Grossman, a research professor with the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo who studies AI ethics, among other things.

Microsoft and other tech companies invested in OpenAI for a while Google quietly developed a chatbot called Bard. Of course, these new developments are not foolproof; OpenAI shut down temporarily on Monday due to reports of bugs that allowed some users to see titles of other users’ chat histories, for example.

Google started Bard as a webpage on its own rather than sourcing it off of its search engine and leads users to get more detailed information from Googling lists. Microsoft, the one of larger investors of OpenAI, added a similar chatbot to its Bing internet search engine to challenge Google. Google has dominated the “search engine” for 20 years, but Microsoft hopes to take over with Bing’s new AI chatbot.

Many other chatbots are coming into the very competitive tech world, who will be at the top of the world, we don’t know yet, but we all have been watching them as spectators or runners in that space and hope that the one with the most reliable information wins out for the betterment of society and minimization of harm.

Ozempic’s Diabetes Medicine Could Help with Weight Loss

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Leslie Park

The news these days is filled with women obsessed with taking risks to lose and maintain weight, as was the case here. Social media is blowing up with one particular brand called Ozempic, which the FDA has proved as diabetes medication. The medicine was originally approved to treat diabetes 2, chronic conditions, and obesity. Recently, it has been proven for weight loss too. Some said after they have taken this medication from their doctor’s prescription, they dropped pounds as desired and quickly.

ICYMI, Ozempic is an FDA-approved prescription medication used to treat type 2 diabetes in adults, explains Natasha Bhuyan, MD, a family medicine physician with One Medical.

It, however, also has many side effects of taking this medication, such as abdominal pains, and those with thyroid concerns shouldn’t take it. Of course, it leads to an impact on the body and face, Dr. Joshua Zeichner, an associate professor of dermatology and the director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai said.

These drug prices are cheaper in Mexico and Canada than USA as usual, and people have tried to get their medications there despite increased risk.

Ozempic is a weekly injection designed to improve blood sugar control. Its active ingredient semaglutide mimics the action of a hormone naturally found in the body that stimulates insulin release after you eat called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). The extra insulin helps lower blood sugar and prevent spikes. GLP-1 also signals fullness, helping to suppress appetite and reduce food intake.

Semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus, is an antidiabetic medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and as an anti-obesity medication for weight loss management, developed by Novo Nordisk in 2012

Basically, Ozempic works by slightly elevating metabolic rate and increasing fat burning from fat cells, says Benjamin Bikman, Ph.D., a professor of cell biology and physiology at Brigham Young University who studies metabolic function and co-founder of HLTH codes, according to the Women’s Health magazine.

Before taking this Semaglutide, all things to be considered, are allergies, age, and the status of pregnancy, and if you are taking these medications, you shouldn’t take the Semaglutide as well. According to Mayo Clinic,

Chloroquine
Chlorpropamide
Ciprofloxacin
Delafloxacin
Enoxacin
Gatifloxacin
Gemifloxacin
Glimepiride
Glipizide
Gliquidone
Glyburide
Grepafloxacin
Hydroxychloroquine
Insulin
Insulin Aspart, Recombinant
Insulin Bovine
Insulin Degludec
Insulin Detemir
Insulin Glulisine
Insulin Lispro, Recombinant
Levofloxacin
Lomefloxacin
Metformin
Moxifloxacin
Nateglinide
Norfloxacin
Ofloxacin
Repaglinide
Sparfloxacin
Tolazamide
Tolbutamide
Trovafloxacin

While this is a treatment that can help many Americans, a regular diet and exercise is still one of the best ways to lose and maintain a healthy weight.

Sargassum Migrates and Crowds Florida Beach

Posted on March 15, 2023 by Leslie Park

One of the oxygen perpetrators from the ocean migrated to the Florida beach and hosted a party that made many beachgoers’ faces frown. A seaweed, Sargassum, has more than 300 species of brown algae habitats in the Atlantic ocean. They arrived like a flock of fish one day.

According to CNN, “It comes in such [large] quantities that it basically sucks the oxygen out of the water and creates what we refer to as dead zones,” Lapointe said. “These are normally nursery habitats for fisheries … and once they’re devoid of oxygen, we have lost that habitat.” It also is dangerous to human health when the rotting algae release gas, as hydrogen sulfate is toxic and can cause respiratory problems. The seaweed itself also contains arsenic in its flesh, and it can be dangerous if ingested or used for fertilizer, he added.

The cleaning process will be very difficult and costly. Dr. Gustavo Jorge Goni, the director of the physical Oceanography Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory said that the currents at sea can alter sargassum’s annual growth and accumulation. He added that Phosphorus and nitrogen in the sea can also serve as food for the algae. Those elements came in high amounts from the rivers to the ocean and that indicated how much agriculture and fossil fuel production ruined our ecosystem, according to EPA ( Environmental Protection Agency).

Dr. Goni said that researchers are seeking ways of solutions like sinking them to the bottom of the ocean or making soap through commercial production.

U.S. Drone MQ-9 was hit by Russian Fighter Jet Su-27

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Leslie Park

The unmanned drone, U.S. MQ-9 Reaper was hit by the Russian fighter jet Su-27 in the international airspace over international waters, at the Black Sea on Tuesday around 7 am (CET), Fox News reported. According to the U.S. defense official, one of two Su-27s flew in tandem when the collision happened in the international airspace over the Black Sea. The SU-27 landed in Crimea after the incident, and the situation of the fighter jet is unknown.

The State Department is summoning the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov to express its “strong objections” to the intercept. “U.S. European Command and U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) issued a statement on the incident in which they reported the events leading up to the collision and admonished the Russian military for a ‘pattern of dangerous actions’ in international airspace.”

Su-27 attempted to humiliate the unmanned drone by “fuel dumping, flying in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound, and unprofessional manner” before striking the propeller of the MQ-9. The statement said, “This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” According to Fox News.

“Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9,” said Gen. James B. Hecker, commander, USAFE-AFAFRICA. “In fact, this unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians nearly caused both aircraft to crash.”

The U.S. MQ-9 being downed by the Russian SU-27 in international airspace is a very sensitive issue under the Russia-Ukraine war and neighboring countries.

Biden Administration Approves Willow Oil Project in Alaska and the Arctic area

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Leslie Park

Criticism for President Biden is on the increase after he approved the Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska. It’s contradicting what he promised to the citizens of the United States of America in 2020. Biden has expressed implementing clean energies and environmental agendas in his presidential slogan. Halfway through his term, it seems he’s betrayed many by approving this new project.

The Willow project directs its attention to Alaska’s far North Slope and is known for the most significant oil development in the region. The company for the Willow project, ConocoPhillips expressed that it will create local investment and thousands of jobs. However, the company’s reputation is less than stellar to environmental activists. According to the Guardian, ConocoPhillips ranks as top 14 on pollution, primarily of methane, which is known to be one of the more dangerous gases for trapping too much heat within the atmosphere.

President Biden’s climate, environment, and clean energy agendas are in dilemma not because of what he promised to the U.S. citizens but because he made a choice that he shouldn’t have. He seems to be contradicting himself. Why has he changed his strong agenda for clean energy and toward drilling the “federal land,” from now on?

The promised jobs are never in plentiful supply in contrast to the income these companies earn, and the pollution will nevertheless impact us in terrible ways. How the Democratic Party expects the US to reelect this person into the Presidency, many of us no longer understand.

Russia uses Hypersonic Missiles to attack Ukraine; Soil Ruined

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Leslie Park

On Thursday, Russia launched 81 missiles to attack multiple cities in Ukraine and 6 of them were hypersonic missiles, according to NPR. These hypersonic missiles, named Kinzhal or “Dagger” in Russian can accelerate to Mach 4 and may be capable of speeds of up to Mach 10, with a range of about 1,250 miles. These missiles also come with nuclear capabilities.

Kinzhal is not easy to detect with unpredictable course changes. So the opposite side is vulnerable when attacked by it. The Russian government also developed Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle that can fly up to Mach 27. Another high-tech-developed hypersonic missile developed by Russia could be a “game changer” in the war with Ukraine.

There is a debate between Mr. James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Mr. Glen VanHerck, the U.S. Northern Command Chief Air Force General, about the Kinzhal’s capacity and capability of the weapon itself. Mr. Acton said, “The Kinzhal is launched from an aircraft and has a shorter range than Avangard,” and last year he told the BBC, “I don’t know how much of an advantage Russia is getting from using hypersonic missiles.” On the contrary, General VanHerck stood at the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee and said Russia was having “challenges with some of their hypersonic missiles as far as accuracy” in Ukraine.

Victor Cha, Former National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration said that the hypersonic missile system was developed by North Korea and needed to be sophisticated, and the U.S. missile system is “good”. He said that the hypersonic missile was “geared towards stopping a handful of fairly primitive missiles from North Korea.” to NPR.

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