Turkey and the United States have agreed to launch the first phase of putting in place a safe zone in northern Syria after months of dispute over the depth of the zone and who would control it.

We've long explored how the nation's phone companies don't really even want to be in the broadband business. They routinely refuse to upgrade their networks despite millions in subsidies, yet often lobby to ensure nobody else can deliver broadband in these neglected footprints either. US telcos have a bizarre disdain for their paying customers, delivering the bare minimum (slow DSL) at the highest rates they can possibly charge without a full-scale consumer revolt. It's not surprising then that many telco DSL customers are fleeing to cable, assuming they even have a second broadband option.

I’ve been seeing the bales of plastic piling up at my local dump and I thought, “Why not make building materials out of all this stuff?” It turns out that there are some small moves being made in that direction.

Google and Mozilla are making changes to their respective web browsers to try and thwart the notoriously corrupt government of Kazakhstan's efforts to launch a surveillance operation against its own citizens. Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), and now Apple (Safari) are all blocking a root certificate from the Kazakhstan government in their browsers which could be used to intercept encrypted traffic that goes to and Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, or any other news or communication app people might be using there.

In a move that is being hailed as a step toward ending prohibitionist policies and Mexico’s bloody “war on drugs,” a judge in Mexico City has ruled that two people are allowed to legally use cocaine on the basis that adults should enjoy the fundamental right to recreationally ingest the substance for personal use.

Beijing is on track to have one CCTV camera for nearly every two people as the Communist Party pushes for Big-Brother-style state surveillance. The country's 1.4 billion population are set to be carefully watched by 626 million street monitors - many having facial-recognition functions - as early as next year, a new study has revealed. 

Fires raging in Brazil's Amazon rainforest have hit a record high number this year, according to new data from the country's space research agency, as concerns grow over President Jair Bolsonaro's management of the environment. Nearly 73,000 fires were recorded between January and August, compared with 39,759 in all of 2018, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said on Monday. The surge marks an 83 percent increase over the same period last year and is the highest since INPE records began in 2013.

London Wallace, 17, has never been in trouble with the law. He’s never been arrested, never committed a crime and had done nothing wrong when his home was raided by a dozen cops—some of whom beat the hell out of him for no reason last month.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has acknowledged for the first time the presence of Russian military fighting alongside Syrian regime forces in the Idlib assault, confirming numerous earlier reports.

Drivers who buy a Mercedes through a finance plan give their permission for the vehicle to be tracked when signing lengthy terms and conditions

In what could potentially become a monumental roadblock in US-North Korea nuclear talks, despite all recent good-will expressed between Kim and Trump through exchange of "beautiful" letters, a major annual Japanese defense review seen by Japan's Yomiuri newspaper will say for the first time that Pyongyang likely already possesses warheads in the form of miniaturized nuclear weapons.

While the Trump administration's war on Huawei may be largely fueled by evidence optional protectionism, that certainly doesn't mean Huawei is an ethical company. Like any good telecom and networking giant, it can routinely be found helping governments engage in behavior that's less than, say, moral. For example a damning report emerged this week in the Wall Street Journal showcasing how Huawei technicians have helped African leaders intercept encrypted transmissions of their political opponents

On Wednesday, Google and Mozilla announced they would block an encryption certificate the Kazakhstan government has forced citizens to download. The certificate allows authorities to intercept Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other passwords of the 18 million people in the country. But now with two of the main browser makers pushing back, that surveillance will be more difficult for the government to carry out.

After 18 years of war, and months of direct talks, the United States appears to be on the brink of reaching an unprecedented peace agreement with the Taliban that would bring about U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Here is more evidence of just how dangerous and out of hand this creeping surveillance architecture is becoming. An investigation by Big Brother Watch has uncovered a facial recognition ‘epidemic’ across privately owned sites in the UK. The civil liberties campaign group has found major property developers, shopping centres, museums, conference centres and casinos using the technology in the UK.

Until now, the general public was only aware of the remarkable ability of Tesla cars to spontaneously combust, that is at least when they are not smashing into random things while on autopilot. It now appears that Tesla's solar panels (some may be unaware that several years ago, Elon Musk tried to unsuccessfully pivot Tesla into a solar power company as well as that's where a few billion in government subsidies were to be found) are just as combustible.

The DNC operative was murdered in the summer of 2016 in Washington DC. His murder was never solved. According to the lawsuit Seth Rich provided WikiLeaks the DNC emails before the 2016 election, not Russia.

Throughout August, one of the most persistent stories has been the claim that ISIS is making a substantial recovery in Iraq and Syria, a claim based on a single Pentagon report which implied only that this might potentially be the case. 

Scientists using the “second generation” of genetic manipulation technology have used gene-editing to alter the DNA of breed of cattle so that they supposedly do not grow horns. At around the same time another group of scientists claim to have injected human cells into monkeys to create chimeras, as in the ancient Greek myths of beings part lion, part snake. Earlier this year a group of Chinese researchers claimed to have deliberately gene-edited monkey clones with a mental disturbance. What few realize is that all this is taking place almost entirely without any serious health and safety regulation. Is this what mankind really needs at this juncture?

The Daily Mail reported Monday that the photos shared by the New York Post last week allegedly showing Ghislaine Maxwell eating at an In-N-Out in Los Angeles were staged with the help of her "close friend and attorney," Leah Saffian.